


History is Underrated

by daroos



Series: Pants Off [3]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Coulson Lives, F/F, F/M, Foursome - F/F/M/M, Fury is a dick, Hawkeye & Hawkeye - Freeform, Implied Sexual Assault, Light Bondage, M/M, Multi, Porn, Presumed Dead, Smut, Threesome - F/M/M, Tony doesn't know where all these people came from, Winter Soldier Saga
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 20:13:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daroos/pseuds/daroos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AKA: The Porny Winter Soldier Saga</p><p>In which Natasha and Steve both discover an old friend, Clint makes some new ones, Darcy knows how to take care of her team, JARVIS repurposes himself as a guidance counselor, and Tony generally feels left out.  This is a continuation of the fic Pants are Overrated for which I blame the Avengers kink meme.  Contains 30% plot, 25% PWP 20% fluff and 25% angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	History is Underrated

**Author's Note:**

> Set after Four Part Harmony.
> 
> A huge thank you to Pook and Twiller, without whom this fic would contain a lot more spurious commas and not-actually-words, as well as an adverb bloom which might cause illness in the fish. If you feel I missed a tag please let me know, and as always, comments are appreciated. Used to fill my "presumed dead" slot in trope bingo.

“I kind of thought that it would calm down if... you know,” Steve said, sounding embarrassed. Steve settled on the couch next to a very naked Darcy. Clint and Natasha were out doing super-spy business and as strange as it was, Steve felt like his apartment was empty and drafty without at least one other person sharing the space with him. He had practically begged Darcy to come back and join him for dinner, and she had nearly done some property damage ripping his clothes off afterwards.

She flipped through channels until she found an old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation to watch. “Really?”

“Well, yeah.” Steve felt embarrassed in addition to sounding it. He had somehow thought that when he found that right gal and was making some regular two-backed-beasts with her, his sex drive would _calm down_. Instead it seemed like exercising his libido, instead of exorcising, had merely encouraged the thing.

“Seriously, Supersoldier - I am all orgasmed out, but if you want to take shameless advantage of me nobody is going to stop you. Least of all me.” Darcy starfished herself across the couch in a blatant offer, and Steve was hard-pressed to not jump on her there and then. She was like everything every one of the Commandos had dreamed about while out in the field; an amazing rump and shapely hips, breasts that were more than generous, creamy, smooth skin and the most wicked smile he could remember seeing. Just lingering on her lips too long caused his dick to start coming to attention.

“Darcy,” he almost-groaned. In all seriousness, they had just finished having really amazing sex about a half-hour earlier. She had passed out curled around his hip for a long twenty minutes, and then showered before their various bodily fluids could congeal too badly.

“You really thought your sex drive would let up if you let it out for a romp? You never heard of ‘use it or lose it’?” Darcy had a cutting tongue, even when she was being sweet, and he could tell she was being sweet.

“No...” he replied slowly. He neglected to tell her that what little he _did_ know of sex was heavily influenced by parochial school and was severely lacking in many areas.

“Well, let’s just be thankful that the Super Serum kept your nuts from shriveling up from the lack of use, then. Because, seriously? Not sharing your sex drive with the world would have been a crime against humanity.”

Steve blushed. Steve found that Darcy was constantly making him blush, whether in the bedroom or in the Avengers’ lounge. She seemed to take pleasure in getting a rosy shine in his cheeks. “I just... It can be distracting,” he replied.  
Darcy rolled her eyes. “Okay, so here’s my basic sex-thinking-about curve, and me saying that is a sign of how much time I’ve been spending with the Super-Nerds in R&D. You have a baseline ‘I want sex’ level, right? But without a willing partner your actual level of sex is low.” Steve nodded, feeling a bit lost. He’d gotten good at repressing sexual urges over the years; at first because he knew no woman would be interested in him and later because he knew women were just interested in him for his notoriety or his new physique. And because of Peggy. “So you get a regular partner, you’re doing everything under the sun and it’s super awesome. Uptick in your sex drive, but no worries because you’ve got a super-enthused partner. So your need for sex goes up, the availability of sex goes up, thus your total wanting of sex that you’re not getting goes down. But give it a while and... it’s not that sex gets old, but you’re like... Less incapacitated by the need for it. Your wanting of sex and the availability of sex approach equality. Does that make sense?”

Steve had never been _incapacitated_ per se by the need for sex unless it was presenting itself in front of him and teasing like Darcy and Natasha were both wont to do. The fact that most of his life had been spent in various states of stress, starvation, and war meant that his perception of his own physical urges could be skewed at times. That said, the jelly-kneed, mentally incoherent stage of want _was_ familiar to him, if the fulfillment of that want was newly discovered.

“So, like, I can wander around some sweaty hot naked guys and be thinking how much I’d like Clint’s dick in me, and save up the horniness for him. Or you. Or Tash. It’s like displaced arousal, or some shit.” Darcy ran the tip of her tongue over her red, red lips. Even without lipstick they were this gorgeous dark color that made him think of ripe fruit, and when she licked them they glistened invitingly. “C’mere, soldier,” she said gently, crooking her finger.

He knelt between her legs and held himself over her, glancing over every part of her face as though to memorize it, before dipping down for a kiss. She responded eagerly, lips soft and smooth except for one point by her right canines where she was prone to worrying at. He licked that spot, soft but surely and dipped his tongue into her mouth. She sucked on his tongue with a groan reminiscent of when she sucked on his cock, and at the sense-memory his cock twitched and he flushed.

Darcy ran her palms down his chest, stopping to caress his hip bones, before curling around his ass cheeks. “I can’t believe you thought getting some would make you want it less.” Darcy grinned up at him, snapping her teeth shut in front of his nose.  
\--  
“Six,” Natasha said.

“Really? It’s like, kind of long and pointy,” Darcy said, waving a lemon zester like a rapier.

“The construction isn’t solid enough to get in a good stab to a vital area, though. I’d have to bludgeon them eventually. It’d be closer to a seven or an eight but the handle is pretty substantial.”

“Huh.” Darcy shrugged, dropping the zester and hunting through the drawer. She pulled out something that fit easily in the hand and ended in a somewhat hollowed, pointy, sharpened.... scoop?

“Two,” Natasha said quickly.

“What the fuck is this thing?” Darcy asked, looking at it from a few directions. Natasha neatly disarmed her and put it back in the drawer.

“It’s a strawberry huller,” Pepper told them calmly. “Do I want to know what you two are doing?”

“Natasha’s rating everything on a scale of how easy it would be to kill someone with your weird kitchen gadgets.”

“One is the easiest,” Natasha added. Darcy held up lobster claw shaped shell crackers. “Five or six depending on whether they’re aluminum or enamel coated cast iron.”

“Should I be worried?” Pepper asked.

“Darcy was curious what I could turn into a weapon.”

“The answer is, pretty much everything,” Darcy supplied. She held up a potato ricer.

“Four. Barton is the slowest packer I’ve had to deal with. We had to send him back three times because his luggage was all arrows. He once showed up to a retreat in Colorado with three quivers, two bows, and nothing he could wear in the snow. It was January.”

“There weren’t any sexy bathing suits in his luggage,” Darcy pouted.

“Right - you’re using the Malibu house this week.” Pepper smiled fondly. The more time Tony spent in New York the more time Pepper found herself spending there. Between SHIELD and running Stark industries she felt like she spent half her time in the air. The memory of her bedroom in the Malibu mansion, and more recently Tony’s bedroom in the same building was entirely fond.

Clint chose that moment to enter the lounge’s kitchen. He had pared his archery equipment down to a single duffle with his foldable bow, a quiver of arrows, and a speargun for fishing, and by the squishy appearance of that duffle he had packed some clothes as well.

“Ready to go, sweetcheeks?” he asked Darcy with a jaunty grin.

“Yeah - just one more thing.” Darcy held up the hand mixer, sans beaters.

“Seven. Those things are built to break.”  
\--  
Steve was surprised when he walked into his apartment and was greeted with the business end of a pistol. He threw himself behind the kitchen counter without a thought but there was no shot. Replaying the last few moments through his mind he realized the face behind the muzzle was familiar. "Nat?" he asked, hesitantly. She had never shown up unannounced in his apartment. If he was honest she had broken in, really. "I'm standing up now." He stood slowly and the gun was no longer pointed his way. Natasha was nestled in his bedspread, stolen off his bed, on his couch. The gun was still in her hand but rested on top of the blankets.

He hadn't seen her in a bit over a week - _out on black ops stuff with SHIELD_ his mind supplied, and he realized what must have happened. Clint and Darcy were borrowing Stark's Malibu mansion for some vacation time. She'd come home to an empty apartment - all of the Avengers' floors were empty, actually. She must have come to his apartment looking for a friendly face. "It's good to see you too, Nat," he said, grinning a bit at his reaction.

"You move fast for a big fella,” she said, sounding rough.

"Can I come over without getting shot?" he asked. She made a tiny head gesture which he knew meant 'yes'. "Do you need anything? Tea? Food?"

"Just get over here. I'm cold." He approached and gave her a pointed look. With a roll of her eyes she placed her gun on his coffee table and tightened her grip on his blanket. He picked her and the blankets up and relocated them both to his bed. She splayed her full length on top of him, soaking up his heat with every available inch of her. She smelled of sweat and gunsmoke, steel and grease, and he sighed. Sense memory reminded him strongly of his time with the Commandos.

"Hm?" Natasha made an inquisitive sound.

"You smell nice. Familiar," he added. She huffed a little laugh into his neck. "Really," he insisted, "you smell like hard work, and-" _and Peggy_ , he thought but didn't say. The memory of the smells of warm rubber and diesel engines and the trace of sweat that can never quite be laundered out of wool wafted through his head. Natasha smelled like hard work and moral certainty.

"You have to be the only guy besides Clint who thinks that," she said, quietly, almost derisively. Steve carded his fingers through her hair, working the tangles out gently.

"What happened, Nat?"

Her arms went around his middle, squeezing hard. "I failed my post-mission psych," she said quietly. He continued stroking her hair in a soothing rhythm. Part of Natasha's armor - her unshakable strength - was her ability to put her feelings aside and fit on any mask required. She did it routinely for post mission psychs - he imagined they knew that. Her inability to do so convincingly meant she was more than shaken. She relaxed slowly on him, pent up tension draining out muscle by muscle.

"I'm stood down for the week," she said finally, sounding as though she had been crying. Sure enough Steve's shirt had a damp patch under her face which she had made without movement or sound. He kissed the top of her head and said nothing. "I couldn't get straight what was real and what wasn't," she said finally, rising enough to scrub at her face. "I need some sleep."

"You can sleep here," he offered quietly.

"I need a shower before." She was starting to sound grumpy and demanding on top of exhausted, which Steve took that as a positive sign.

"We can do that." Steve rolled her off and gently disentangled both of them from the bedspread. He ran the water in the tub to get it warm before retrieving Natasha and settling her in the corner of the egregiously large tub/shower combo that came standard in Tower apartments. His shirt was wetted under the spray as he settled Natasha, so he stripped quickly to join her. Natasha's red, red hair looked like a splash of blood behind her head on the tile of the tub. She was lightly dozing, folded in on herself. Applying a liberal quantity of soap to his shower sponge, he crouched in front of her. "Nat," he said, so as not to startle her with strange hands on her naked body. She gave him a look of exhaustion and a bald sort of trust which he took to say 'get on with it'.

He ran the sponge down her, starting under her chin, across her neck and shoulders, over her chest and belly. He went back for arms and ribs, thighs and groin. He washed her calves and feet, splaying out delicate toes painted red. One nail was incongruously bruising off. She sat up so he could wash her back, and he massaged a bit of shampoo into her scalp. Soap bubbles melted and chased each other across her breasts. Even exhausted and sallow she was like something gorgeous out of a picture, and so much better at the same time.

"You know I could do this myself," she said, once more puddled in the tub. The lapping spray was slowly rinsing her clean of soap.

"I know." Steve said, going through his own showering ablutions.

When he was finished he turned off the tap and moved to fetch Natasha once more. "Just help me up." She held out her arm which he took at the elbow to help her upright and out of the shower. She allowed him to towel her off. While he dried himself she walked to his front room and returned with her pistol. The sight of her naked, holding her gun, was surprisingly arousing. He tamped that down, moving to escort her back to bed.

"How are you so _nice_?" She curled into him, one hand on her gun under her pillow. He'd gotten used to people sleeping in their beds with guns between Clint and Natasha’s obsessive habit.

"What do you mean?"

"You're just such a decent guy."

"Well... thank you."

She laughed. "See, you're doing it again. How can you stand being around Clint and I?"

"You're both good people. You just maybe had a harder time figuring it out than most."

He didn't mean to, but Natasha was soft and comforting and smelled of his soap. He fell asleep only to be woken several hours later. Natasha shifted when he rose but remained asleep. It was late evening tending towards the middle of the night. He had missed dinner and he had the feeling Natasha should eat as well, so he toasted bagels and scrambled eggs. He sliced fruit into yogurt and tomatoes onto eggs and added a few slices of ham from the whole roast Thor brought over and left only half-eaten earlier that week.

His tray was hilariously full. "Nat? Do you want to eat?" He tapped the doorframe with his foot. She groaned expressively. He put the tray on his writing desk and went to wake her.

"I'm awake, I'm awake. Quit mother-henning me. You're worse than Clint." Natasha batted at his hand moving to wake her and sat. She had dark circles under her eyes, but she was much more alert and aware. She pulled the pistol from under her pillow and rolled out of bed.

He offered her his desk chair but she perched on the desktop itself, gun next to her naked hip. She put her feet in his lap and piled a bagel high with tomatoes and ham and eggs and folded her hands around her sandwich. She ran the top of one foot up his ribs and back down again, an uncertain look in her eyes. He kissed her knee and made his own sandwich. They ate in silence.

Natasha finished before him, picking berries and pieces of fruit out of the yogurt and licking the dairy product off her fingers like a cat. "You should get some more sleep," he said, entranced by the fruit entering her mouth in a distinctly seductive manner. She rarely used what must be a storehouse of seduction techniques she knew on him. Their encounters tended towards the opportunistic - her pulling his briefs off, or a bared breast coming to his attention. She often let Clint or Darcy instigate. Rarely, she would approach him with, "I'd like to go to bed now," and a raise of one delicate, beautiful eyebrow. "Natasha," he drew out her name.

She looked innocently at him, running the flat of her tongue up the side of her index finger.

"Please don't play me," he said. She blinked, and shook her head minutely as though she didn't know she was doing it. She was suddenly more vulnerable than he'd ever seen her, the faintest edge of fear and confusion showing around the edge of her eyes. "You never need to play me, Nat."

She stared at him for a long moment before her shields and protections slammed up once more, shuttering her eyes from him. "Thanks Cap," she said huskily, putting the peach slice in her fingers on the plate.

"Do you want to talk about it?"he offered quietly.

She shook her head, curls bouncing. He let her sit, hand curling and uncurling around the grip of her pistol for many minutes before setting his plate aside and moving back to the bed. Her eyes cast over him warily, finally coming to a decision to join him. She spooned behind him, incongruously the big spoon. She wrapped an arm around his chest and threw her thigh over his waist, squeezing him almost uncomfortably tightly.  
\--  
Natasha slept for nearly a full day in Steve's bed, rising twice to pee and drink a liter of water. Steve tried to get some information out of SHIELD but they were buttoned up tight on the subject, even for Captain America.

Natasha was normally, justifiably paranoid, but her paranoia ratcheted up a notch or three once she was back to full operational capacity. She patrolled the halls regularly, harassed Tony's security personnel and bullied building managers in the surrounding properties to let her in so she could build risk profiles for distance assassination attempts. Steve found her arguing with Tony in his workshop.

"I am not going to install EMPs in my Tower - not in the quarters, not in the foyer, not within five hundred meters of my R&D department."

"You don't understand the immediate danger this man poses."

"No, I think I really do - I've read the file - but anything strong enough to take him would would melt Iron Man _and_ JARVIS into slag."

"You should sleep with the suitcase suit," Natasha stated, turning on her heel to terrify someone else. It was a testament to how off-kilter she was that she slipped by him without a word.

Tony let out a breath in a relieved sigh. Steve sat down on the couch and gave Tony a questioning look. "What's up, gramps?" Tony asked without looking up.

"What was that about?" Steve asked seriously.

Tony rubbed his face hard. "Natasha wanted me to install EMP charges as part of her new security measures. Do you know what's been up with her lately?"

"You mentioned a file," Steve said without answering the question.

Tony gave him a sidelong look. "Yeah. She was trying to impress on me _why_ I should want to install tech that would kill JARVIS and the bots and effectively disarm me for at least three weeks."

"I need that file. I don't want to know how she got it but I need that file," Steve said seriously.

"What's going on?"

"I don't know. She came home from an op, failed a psych eval and has been preparing for war since then. I would like to know why."

"J - get copies for Cap. Eyes only security measures."

"Of course, Sir."  
\--  
The file was... disturbing. It was a love letter to calculated, untraceable murder. The records started in the fifties when SHIELD's HYDRA mandate and combatting the Red Menace had gotten all mixed together. The last record was 1992 and involved a fire at a nuclear facility and a charred corpse which SHIELD had ID'd as the Winter Soldier.

This Winter Soldier was a Soviet wetwork asset, largely considered one of the most effective assets ever exercised by any government. He had close to 180 kills attributed to him in his 40 year career. He didn't appear to be the sole property of the governmental USSR, branching out occasionally for some obscure and some high profile targets that couldn't possibly have been of interest to the regime.

Most of the hits were carried out at 80 to 200 meters with various models of rifle - no clear preference for make or style. A significant subset of the kills were carried out at close range; some with pistols, others with crushed windpipes indicating superhuman strength. A third, more disturbing subset weren’t included in his official kill counts. They were the unexpected deaths of over two dozen officials, diplomats and businessmen which were suspicious only for the political implications and some eyewitness accounts which put a man of similar build and coloring near the scenes.

"Sir, Ms. Lewis and Agent Barton have just arrived from the airstrip," JARVIS interrupted his reading.

"Thank you." Steve set down the Stark Pad and sighed. If Natasha really had had some sort of mental breakdown and believed this guy was out to get them or her it would explain a lot.

Darcy and Clint were both tanned and happy looking, and perfectly willing to let Steve carry their bags into Clint's room. Steve laughed when Clint took off his sunglasses to reveal an impressive sunglass tan.

"I missed you!" Darcy said, literally jumping him and wrapping her legs around his hips in a surprisingly strong grip. She kissed him and leaned back into his hands, braced to support her back. "Did you know Clint has so little body fat he sinks in the ocean?"

"I'm just a bad swimmer," Clint protested, shucking his shoes and shirt. "Not five minutes back and you have your legs wrapped around Cap," Clint tutted in mock reproof.

"I had my legs wrapped around _you_ for the last two weeks - I think you'll survive."

Clint sidled up behind her and hugged them both. "Now that you mention it, this could be an awesome position."

"Oh my god no. I think my vagina has road rash." Steve blushed and Clint laughed, nuzzling her neck affectionately.

Around the back of Darcy's head, Clint met Steve's eyes for the first time and looked troubled by what he saw.

"Can we talk when you have a minute?" Steve asked, transferring Darcy to Clint. He wrapped his arms around her middle and she kicked her legs happily in the air before standing on her own.

"Babe?" she asked, looking questioningly between them.

"Why don't you go show Betty your tan?" Clint suggested.

"You just want me to get Betty to get Bruce to get out of the lab." She gave Steve a look that reminded him she wasn't dumb and that she knew when she was being sent off. She kissed him then Clint on the cheeks and left them to talk.

Clint collapsed on the couch. "So what's up, bossman?"

Steve explained how Natasha had been benched and acting strangely the last several days. "I need you to tell me what you know about Natasha's history with the Winter Soldier."

Clint paled under his tan, inhaling and exhaling slowly. "Damn."

Steve lifted Clint's legs and sat, settling them across his lap. "Talk to me," Steve commanded.

"You know about where Natasha came from?"

"Russia...?" Steve asked.

"The Red Room."

Steve frowned. "Most of Black Widow's training history was not available to me. I decided to take her skills based on SHIELD testing." Steve had argued back and forth with them over that very issue for weeks.

"So I don't know the whole story, but the Red Room - from what I know - was this assassination/espionage... stable. They started up in the fifties; there were rumors that they had Soviet Super Soldier Serum, but those were never substantiated. Anyway, from what I know, Tash was born sometime in the fifties and taken in the early sixties after being orphaned." Steve winced. "They did... a lot of messed up shit to her; chemical and psychological programming, memory implants, the kindest of Soviet training regimes for the under ten crowd, and some bastardized super-serum.'

"What does that have to-"

"I'm getting to that." Clint sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Natasha was the crown jewel of the Red Room, but the Winter Soldier was their first and only son. He was her Obi Wan." Steve frowned at the reference but understood it. "He tried to flee with her once, on a mission, and she turned them back in."

"So... there's a lot of history between them. Would that be why she's afraid he'll target us?"

"That's the thing. SHIELD declared him dead before I even joined up. Tash was the only one who harbored doubts but she would never tell me why. She would never even admit that she thought he was still alive on anything official."

Steve chewed over the story. "That would put Winter Soldier in his 80's at least and Natasha in her sixties."

"...yeah..." Clint looked uncomfortable. "Part of the Red Room memory fuckery was some kind of cryo program - they'd put their pet spies on ice between assignments. She might actually be sixty or something but she's only lived about thirty years. That probably worked with whatever they injected her with, to keep her young. I assume the same was true of the Winter Soldier."

Steve took a deep breath and a moment to think. "Have you ever considered how our lives and the lives of the people we fight run on eerily parallel tracks?" Steve asked.

"The thought has occurred to me."

"Okay, so... Natasha thinks her mentor is out to kill us and that nobody in SHIELD would believe her if she brought it up. Which obviously they wouldn't because she got benched by the psychologists when she brought up the possibility," Steve surmised. "That would explain some of her erratic behavior."

"Also? And this is totally unconfirmed and me reading between the very thin lines, but I think they slept together. Or were together. Or may be the reason for her allergy to the word 'love'."

Steve dropped his head back against the back of the couch. "Of course. Because there wasn't enough emotions and angst already."

Clint shrugged. "The Red Room might have played with her brains like scrambled eggs but I trust Nat on this. If she thinks she saw him, he's alive. Whether he's got a boner for some Avengers blood, I don't know."

"Did SHIELD ever get an ID? A suspect sketch? Anything beyond 'death-dealing phantom'?"

"Aside from the corpse? Not that I heard. But like I said, before my time."

"She probably has her own file - I'll have to get her story." Steve grimaced to himself; attempting to coax or pry information from Natasha was the most foolhardy thing he was going to attempt in months. Clint grimaced in sympathy. Steve stood to leave; there was nothing about his problem that would be helped by waiting.  
\--  
Natasha had an eerie way of reading people that felt an awful lot like psychic powers. She took one look at Steve and rolled her eyes. "Barton spilled his guts, didn't he?"

" _Clint_ informed his team leader of vital information which you were withholding," Steve corrected sharply. "Now I'm going to ask nicely: please tell me what he doesn't know."

She glared at him, eyes flashing with challenge, and a bit of the unhinged, frenetic energy that had been the hallmark of the last few days. "I was on the countermeasures detail for security at a meeting of the finance ministers in Prague. He... he wasn't there for me or my people."

"Okay, so you saw him while on assignment. Did he see you? Is that what's got you worried?"

"I got there too late, but I tried to stop him. I tracked him for two days but I lost the trail outside Gdansk. I think he hopped a boat but I can't be sure."

"You went off-assignment to go after him." Her psych failure suddenly made sense. If they thought she'd ran half-way across europe chasing a dead man... She nodded in confirmation, a sullen, brooding look drilling through him. "So you chased him; he knew you were after him. What has you trying to lock us all down now?"

"People have been turning up dead. Lots of people. Scientists who had defected. Low level Red Room staffers. High level bureaucrats. Low level bureaucrats. An operative or two..." She ran her hands down her sides in what some might mistake for a nervous gesture, but which Steve knew was her checking her knives and guns. "He's incredibly dangerous and I don't think SHIELD will do anything before it's too late."

"Then we'll just have to do something first," Steve said matter of factly. Natasha didn't relax, precisely, but the line of tension which held her ramrod straight softened. She nodded her head once, curt. "Lets start by getting a sketch going - maybe Tony can hijack SHIELD's facial recognition software to find this guy. I bet he's not used to the CCTV feeds if he's been out of the game for twenty years."

Steve drew on automatic, piecing together a face from Natasha’s description of features: broad forehead and slightly cleft chin, square skull, fuller lower lip, a modest nose, broad at the temples, narrowing to join with moderately broad nostrils, thick straight brows.

Natasha looked at his rendering and shrugged. “That’s relatively close.”

Steve looked at who he had drawn and his breath caught. Natasha eyed him thoughtfully but didn’t say anything. Carefully, Steve revised the drawing, adding in details from his own memory. Lovingly he filled out the face of James Buchanan Barnes and held it up for Natasha. “That’s him,” she said decisively. Steve felt something deep within himself break at her words.

“That is Bucky Barnes,” he replied quietly. Natasha frowned and nodded.

“You Brooklyn boys have all the luck.”

“If that’s what you want to call it.” Steve stared at the sketch of his friend, remembering the terrifying, horrible moment of his fall and the tarpit of recrimination and anger that had taken up permanent residence in his gut afterwards. Bucky was dead. He said it to himself a few times but it tasted no less bitter and no less true than it had in the intervening time. This man who Natasha feared was someone new and different; a murderer, a bully, and a threat. The color drained from Steve’s face at the thought of having to not only watch his friend die again, but potentially having to be the one to kill him.

Natasha rested her fingertips lightly against the back of Steve’s hand. Steve looked up at her. Natasha was never one for open shows of emotion. Pleasure and annoyance were the most common things to show through her face, but occasionally Steve was privy to flashes of tenderness, hurt, fear, and amusement. If he had been hard pressed to put a name to the look she was giving him, he would have gone with sympathetic. She looked sad, almost nostalgic, and as though she wanted to comfort him but couldn’t begin to fathom how.

“When I first met you I didn’t like you at all,” Natasha said matter of factly. Steve hadn’t known that, but it didn’t particularly surprise him: Natasha didn’t like many people upon first introduction. “Phil said it was just because you were everything I hated about America personified, but that wasn’t why.” Steve had gone still, but at the mention of Coulson he froze, each beat of his heart feeling like a betrayal in motion. Natasha and Clint never talked about Coulson; it was an unwritten law. “You reminded me of _him_. The way he walked, the way he fought - you were like a giant blond ghost walking out of my past and rubbing it in my face. You were everyone I had betrayed and everything I had done to build up my debts.” The fingers on his hand were still light, but there was a whipcord tension in them.

“You knew,” Steve breathed out.

“I suspected,” Natasha corrected with a look that said _don’t get your tailfeathers in a bunch_. “It could have been coincidence. It could have been a product of World War II training regimes. After your defrost most of the files with any photos of Barnes were put into ultra-top-secret on Fury’s orders, so I never saw a good rendering of him.” _Before now_ , went unsaid between them. “He called himself James, once. That’s the only reason... It was when he tried to run. He called himself James.”

“And you turned him back in.” Steve said it flatly and without emotion which he supposed was better than the accusing way he’d wanted to say it.

Her look turned dark and bitter. “Yes, Cap, I turned us both in.”

Steve mulled that over.

"He was my first." Natasha said.

"Oh."

Natasha had a look which said she was considering her words. "He was the first I can remember," she amended. "I have reason to believe there was an assignment..." She shrugged. "He was my first."

"How old were you?" Steve asked at a loss.

"Young," she answered simply. "He was my world. He was... unique - so different from everyone else in there. He was one of the first ones they tried the programming on and it was always buggy with him. There were moments where I almost felt like I knew him." Natasha sat in her wingback chair, spine perfectly straight, hands on her thighs. It was the pose she used during reports and questioning.

"Clint said that he tried to escape with you once? And that you brought both of you back in."

"Are you asking why?" She looked Steve in the eyes, flatly curious. Steve nodded slowly. "I cared about him. I was young and weak." Steve couldn't imagine a weak Natasha no matter her age. "I knew what we had done, even then, and I knew what the world would think of that. For all that the Red Room was horror and pain and blood, it was familiar. None of them looked at me with anything but approval for all the terrible things I was good at." She paused, appearing to taste her words and think them over. "He told me of a world I didn't think existed. The State, the Red Room; that was all that existed to me. We were on a job in Hungary. It was the farthest I'd been from base at that point and it was so... exciting."

"We completed the objective and were awaiting extraction. It had all gone so well." She sounded wistful. "I saw it happen. One moment he was the Winter Soldier and the next he was that man I knew under the programming. He told me we had to go - that we could run away together. He would take us to New York or Greece or Peru or wherever I wanted to go and we would forget about the Red Room and become new people." Steve's breath caught just a bit. That grandiose romantic was a man Steve knew. He took her hands from her thighs and squeezed them gently. There was the faintest sheen of tears in her eyes. "He didn't know what he was asking of me. There was something in him. It was deep below the programming but it was there. I had been emptied out and I knew there was nothing waiting at the bottom of my well."

"I went along with him like I would... Like I trusted him, and I took him down and called us both in. We never worked together again. I hadn't seen him until two weeks ago."

"How did Clint bring you in?"

Natasha gave him a wry look, "Off topic, soldier."

"Humor me," he replied.

"No, not today. It's been enough emotional catharsis for one night. Let's just say Barton convinced me that Winter Soldier's dreamland really existed and that I could live in it, and leave it there." She stroked her thumbs across his palms. "We should get that sketch to Stark and get some sleep. If his algorithm comes up with any recent hits we'll be glad of it."

Steve nodded and rose with Natasha. In an impulsive movement, Steve crushed her against him in an enveloping embrace. She softened against him - so delicate but so strong, like silk and steel. "We'll get him back." She made a broken little mew and Steve began rubbing her back. "We'll get him back and patch him back together. I'm not leaving him again."

"No," she agreed.  
\--  
Darcy could have been accused of cluelessness in some instances but she could never have been accused of a lack of sensitivity. She spent enough time in Clint and Natasha’s Tower apartment to read the moods of it. Natasha was anxious enough that the frisson of it danced through everyone near her.

Natasha was anxious and angry, and maybe underneath all that scared in a way Darcy had never seen. Just because she didn’t know why didn’t mean she was impotent to do something about it.

“Hey you,” Darcy greeted. Natasha entered the apartment whisper soft, peeling off her pants and shimmying out of her bra without removing her sweater.

“Darcy,” she acknowledged without entering the kitchen, pacing a circuit of the apartment. On her best days Natasha could be difficult to read and prickly. Clint had helped smooth their relationship until it developed a base of their own. When to touch and when to stay away; when words or actions would have the most impact, was still a rocky course Darcy was only just learning to navigate. If she tried to mother-hen, Natasha would likely lash out and shut her down. She couldn’t simply ignore the other woman. Natasha halted her circuit at the window, staring out of it with high powered binoculars. Darcy approached her from the side, sliding her hand across the rise of Natasha’s buttocks. As she slid close enough to hook her chin over Natasha’s shoulder, Darcy’s nipples brushed the soft wool of the other woman’s sweater and peaked with interest. Natasha was warm through the fabric, but rigid where she was normally pliant.

Darcy had long ago acknowledged that she was a shameless power fucker. She prefered people who were strong, reliable, and in control of their surroundings and themselves. Natasha was a wet dream for Darcy, and feeling the warm, taut planes of steel-strong muscle overlain with soft, supple skin drove her crazy. The neck of Natasha’s sweater hung low enough to show her collarbone and the play of gymnast’s muscles around it. Very gently, Darcy mouthed over Natasha’s trapezius muscle. She bit down, satisfying something primal and deep with the motion.

Darcy growled. Natasha answered her, much more deadly serious. Natasha reached behind herself and twisted her fingers in Darcy’s hair. She guided Darcy so they were face to face and kissed her, tugging her back by the hair when Darcy got too forward for her liking. Darcy sighed into the tiny pain, in that moment ceding control to the other woman. Natasha’s free hand roamed over Darcy; stroking her cheek, palming her jaw, tracing lovingly over her breasts and stomach, and cupping her buttocks firmly.

Darcy was lost in the sensation of Natasha’s tongue stroking hers, hot under her skin and a little blinded with lust. She was unsure how Natasha did it, but before Darcy could register that she was moving, Natasha had spun her around and pinched her on an ass cheek, instigating her movement towards Clint’s bedroom.

“Get on the bed,” Natasha ordered calmly, dimming the lights. Clint’s bed stretched out already disheveled from being slept in and not remade, the sheets smelling of Clint. Darcy obeyed. Natasha brushed her fingers down Darcy’s thighs and back up to lie on her hip bones. The touch was gentle but calculated, surveying the skin she was planning to bend to her will. Darcy shuddered when Natasha dug her fingers in around her hip bones and into her buttocks. Natasha slithered up her body and set her knees to either side of Darcy’s hips, cupping her breasts with her hands and opening her mouth with a thorough kiss. Sharp spikes of pain and pleasure twisted through her as Natasha played with her nipples.

Natasha’s own breasts were still covered by her sweater, but they hung enticingly over Darcy. She reached to touch - to run her hands down Natasha’s ribs, to feel the dip of her spine and to span around her tight, muscular waist. Natasha moved lightening fast, catching her wrist and handcuffing it to the headboard. Darcy’s breath caught with a thrill of excitement; getting professionally ninjaed on during sex had become a major turn on for her.

“What’s the safe word?” Natasha asked her, mouthing down the length of her neck.

“Onomatopoeia,” Darcy replied. She could feel the small smile Natasha allowed herself as she kissed her way across her collarbone.

“That’s a lot of safe word for a woman to get out between the begging and the pleading,” Natasha told her archly. Darcy propped herself up on some pillows and arched into Natasha. The trail of her mouth down Darcy’s body stoked the arousal roiling in her center. When Natasha’s wandering hands finally made it to her slit they teased and stroked gently. Natasha kissed her, body pressing Darcy into the bed hard and fingers pressing into her firmly. Darcy bucked into her fingers and Natasha angled the heel of her palm just so that Darcy’s clitoris would rub into it with her motion. Darcy moaned, testing the movement again. Natasha’s fingers slid into her easily, the movement ended with a satisfying grind.

Darcy was unsure how long Natasha finger fucked her, fingers crooking against her inner walls to hit nerve clusters and erogenous zones in ways Darcy had never experienced. Time and again she almost came, but Natasha would stop her with an iron will and a swift pinch. “You come when I tell you,” Natasha told her, running her slick fingertips along her inner lips, meeting at her clitoris for a brief, almost painfully stimulating second.

“Please,” Darcy begged dragging the word out, panting and pulling on her cuffed wrist.

“Just a bit longer, pet.”

The moment Darcy was given permission, she came. It felt like the orgasm was torn out of her, a battle of arousal and satiety running roughshod over her nerves. Natasha soothed her through the orgasm, withdrawing her sticky fingers and wiping them off on a pillow. Darcy’s thighs ached from pushing up into Natasha’s hand, and her stomach muscles trembled from the effort she had expended trying to forestall her orgasm.

“That’s going to drive Clint insane,” Darcy murmured, rolling onto the pillow and smelling herself on it.

Natasha smiled wickedly. “I know.”  
\--  
“Steve?” Clint peeked his head into Steve’s bedroom. He was drawing sketch after sketch of Bucky from memory; headshots from every angle, Bucky in motion, Bucky curled around his K-31 waiting for a shot, Bucky wearing his BDU pants and overburdened belt and nothing more, smoking a badly rolled cigarette.

Steve did not like to think of himself as prone to fits of pique, but objectively he knew he was moping. “Hm?” he made an enquiring noise at Clint.

“Do I want to know why Tasha is taking out her control issues on Darcy, who is, right now, chained to my headboard?”

“She - wait, what?” They had introduced him to the idea of bondage and dominance games, but Darcy was the only one among them who didn’t have bad memories of being chained up. They’d stuck to silk rope mostly and, after Steve had accidentally squirmed Clint’s favorite purple tie to shreds, even that had mostly been given up.

“Don’t worry - Darce’s fine. Tash only gets like that when she’s feeling seriously out of control, and I’ve never seen Darcy turn up her nose at a professional.. anything.”

“The Winter Soldier was my best friend from Brooklyn who I dropped to his death and Natasha has suspected for basically as long as I’ve been awake.”

Clint gave him a look that was equal parts sympathy and incredulity. “That is heavy.”

“Tell me about it.”

Clint opened his mouth as though he was going to say something but stopped himself. “When you need me, I’ll be there for you guys - you know that, right?”

Steve glanced at Clint - earnest, honest, sarcastic-coating-around-a-caring-center Clint - and a part of himself that had been hardening over softened once more. “Did I ever tell you about Bucky and me?”

“Nope.” Clint sidled over to the bed and sat down. Steve splayed out his drawings starting from stickball when they were kids and ending with a three-quarter profile of Bucky in his uniform during a 24 hour leave. “He was a sniper, too.”

“Once you’ve been with a man who knows how to hit a target...” Clint’s joke trailed off as he realized how inappropriate sexual innuendo was at that moment.

Steve laughed, a little chuckle but something more than morose. “Buck and Farnsworth used to go at it trying for the dirtiest joke. You guys would have gotten along, I think.”  
\--  
“That is like, all kinds of fucked up.” That was Tony’s version of sympathetic. “Like, really fucked up.” Tony shook his head sharply.

“Are you going to gloat that we’re all as screwed up as the rest of you, or are you-”

“Cap, I am offended,” Tony interrupted Steve with a hand over his heart. “I would never gloat that your best friend that you thought dead lo these seventy years was actually a Soviet Super Spysassin and probably out to murder us all. That would be in _poor taste_.”

“And you’d never do anything in poor taste.” Steve rolled his eyes. Tony still wasn’t looking at him, typing things on two keyboards and glancing at his displays.

“You try to help out a national treasure and all you get is sass,” Tony muttered under his breath. “Okay, I have the facial recognition search running - I have it focused in the areas Natasha highlighted. My tap into the SHIELD information network is using a new Baysean likelihood algorithm to pull out any incidents most likely to involve Winter Soldier. The jet is gassed up and ready to rock. It’s...”

“Just a waiting game now,” Steve finished.

Tony’s mustache twitched, discomfited. “Yeah.” Now they waited - for Bucky to kill someone new.  
\--  
Darcy enlisted him to help make pasta in an attempt to distract him. She handed him balls of dough which he kneaded with needless ferocity. She showed him how to press orchettas with his thumb and didn’t giggle when his pastas turned out twice the size of hers. She gave him vegetable after vegetable to chop for sauce, ending the parade with five huge onions. One of the side effects to the super serum was enhanced senses, and hence a higher sensitivity to smells. His eyes were tearing freely by the third onion.

Darcy nudged him with her shoulder. “Aaw, baby, I know this has been a hard week for you.”

“I didn’t—I’m not crying from...” Steve trailed off when he realized Darcy was laughing at him.

“I know it’s the onions, soldier boy.” She pulled him down for a kiss, hooking her leg around his hips.  
\--  
"Suit up, Cap - we're heading to Ostrava. There's been an assassination with his hallmarks."

"Who's flying?"

"Barton's on the stick. Check with Stark for some tech. Wheels up in fifteen."

Steve ran to his locker and armored up, grabbing his leather jacket at the last moment along with his shield. Tony caught him outside the hangar deck, dangling a bandolier of high-tech grenades.

"We're not going to kill him, Tony."

"These won't kill him, just slow him down. They're basically super-powered EMPs, though, so don't set them off within a hundred meters of the jet. And they don’t actually have any explosive charge to them - it’s all EMP - so don’t expect any stopping power to them."

Steve ducked his head and Tony draped the bandolier around his neck. "If you want to bring him here, we can do that. Whatever you need. Nurses. Security-"

"Thanks Tony." Steve didn't realistically think they would get Bucky home in any condition but 'we need a hospital'. A little optimistic sliver of him thought that maybe when Bucky saw him it would all be alright. Bucky was a fighter - one of the strongest men Steve had ever known. Natasha's grim look disabused him of that idea. She looked like she was prepping for war.

"Strap in. Our fight path was just cleared." Clint's voice snapped with command; Steve and Natasha sat and strapped themselves in mechanically.

"Nat?" She looked up at Steve, the slightest frisson of tension in the muscles around his eyes betraying her anxiety. "Do you know why Tony gave me a bunch of EMP grenades?"

"They're for his arm." At Steve's blank look. "Winter Soldier has a cybernetic arm - his left. It's about ten times stronger than baseline human. If we can disable it we have a chance of taking him down."

"Oh." Steve had seen his share of maimed soldiers - men who'd lost legs and arms and eyes. The idea of his - Bucky maimed like that, made his stomach turn. "He wasn't-"

"It never seemed to bother him." She laid a hand on his thigh in silent comfort. He wrapped an arm around her back through the flight harness. He kissed her tenderly on the temple in a way which she would not normally have allowed were there anybody but Clint to see.

"Let's talk strategy," Natasha said, pulling out a StarkPad wired into SHIELD networks.

Ostrava was a modern city in the north east of the Czech Republic. Steve had read about it in the European Union portions of his Welcome to the 21st Century briefing packets and had thought about visiting for the art and history. They were actually headed to Vaclavovice, a widening in the road between Otrava and Frydek-Mistek to the south. The World Security Council's presence in that region was light. What resources they had were entirely devoted to information gathering, and the assets devoted their time to keeping their ears very firmly to the ground. They didn't have a lot of actionable assets in the region, but they got intel at a speed that was astounding.

The murder had been reported by the constabulary only three hours earlier, and it had taken only fifteen minutes for the information to be routed to Natasha from Fury's desk. They landed in a field near the farmhouse where the assassination took place. Steve stepped out of the jet, jacket on in an attempt to be slightly less conspicuous, and was hit with the growing, vibrantly alive smells of a working farm. It had rained recently and the long grass on the hills was heavy and dripping with it. Everywhere was verdantly green or the healthy dark brown of rich soil. Storks nested on the telephone lines, and he could hear the crowing of chickens not too far off.

Natasha took his arm and led him towards the house. Around back, the Czech equivalent of crime scene tape fluttered around the back door and the tiniest splash of blood could be seen on the concrete walkway.

"Who was this exactly?" Steve asked, crouching by the blood.

"Grigory Chernekov. He worked for the Russian Intelligence service for twelve years before becoming a sort of liaison between the Red Room and its operatives and high-level members of the party in the seventies. He didn't do so well when the Cold War ended. He used to say that the world was meant to be a cold place - warming it would just breed weakness."

"Sounds like a swell guy. You knew him, then?"

Natasha shrugged. "I had a few encounters that I remember, over the years. He was always too high up to get his hands dirtier than viewing the assets but he was a lot of the reason the Red Room could afford to operate."

"Doesn't sound like a good guy."

"He was not a nice man." Natasha's eyes flashed with something too calculating to be hatred.

"So what about the hit screamed 'Winter Soldier'?"

"Chernekov's neck was broken, one-handed. Throat and spine were pulverized. The life was literally squeezed out of him."

"That... doesn't sound like a hit. That sounds like revenge."

"Exactly." Natasha nodded decisively, stepping around to get another view of the back door. "Chernekov had lived out his shelf life. He wasn't particularly valuable alive or dead - I can't think of more than a few people who would have found it worthwhile to _pay_ for his death. It _could_ have been some local super-strength mutant, but Winter Soldier... If he was on a spree, Chernekov would be on his list."

Natasha pointed out a few boot prints that might have been his, and then went to explore the outbuildings. Steve followed her, a bit at a loss as to what they were looking for. "He was up here for at least a day. Probably longer," Natasha said from the hay loft. The barn looked like it was built by someone's great-grandfather. The shingles were rotted off in some places and it didn't have the sweet smell of fresh hay. The hay by the loft door had been recently moved around, and a few empty tins were stacked next to it, pried open with a combat knife.

"Why were you so sloppy?" Natasha asked quietly enough that a normal human wouldn't have had a chance of hearing her. She picked through the tins, frowning, and bent to sniff the window ledge.

"What are you thinking?" Steve asked, pushing his boot toe through the scattered hay. Four or seventy-four years ago he wouldn't have been able to breathe with the dust that rose up from it.

"There's something wrong with him. It's... I don't know."

Steve bent to where she had sniffed and did the same. Sweat, sour and just a bit off predominantly, followed by something aluminum-y and something rancid. "I see what you mean."

"He was the best. SHIELD thought he was an urban legend for decades. Any assassinations that they couldn't even begin to unravel got put in Winter Soldier's file: he was less than a ghost. Now there's this - tins of food? Boot prints by the hit? The style of the kill? There's something more going on than just a revenge spree."

"Heads up, guys - intel says he passed through the train station in town - probably heading south," Clint relayed from the Quinjet.

"Is there a second likely target?" Steve asked.

"Yeah,” Clint replied, “Anton Rybkin. I can put us down in at the Leose Janacek airstrip but you'll have to get a vehicle from there into the city. Stanisalaus is setting it up now."

They hustled back to the jet and Clint flew them the short way to the actual airstrip. Clint's crow of laughter as they landed perked Natasha's ears up. "What?"

"He got you an actual I-shit-you-not Yugo."

Natasha sighed while Steve just looked confused. "I'm driving," was all she said. Steve found it a bit difficult to fold his knees up to his ears in the tiny vehicle with his gear, but he managed it.

"Records have Rybkin at 1324 Olesne; I'm routing directions now," Clint informed them. Steve's phone buzzed and he set the screen so Natasha could read it. Turn-by-turn directions and GPS were some of the best inventions of the modern age, by Steve's estimation.

They tore through modern-looking streets leading to quaint lanes, weeds and wildflowers growing verdant in the ditches at the side of the road. Natasha parked the car a kilometer away from the address and got out. Steve dropped his jacket in the passenger's seat and strapped his shield on.

Natasha held out a hand. "Give me some grenades, Cap. I'm going to take any shot I can get so you'd better take your earpiece out unless you want to test your super-hearing recovery time from a pierced ear drum." Steve pulled several of the EMPs off his belt and tossed them to Natasha. "Follow my lead."

She took off at a lope - the easy stride of a distance runner covering ground. Steve followed ten feet behind her, alert. It was almost too bucolically beautiful. Tall trees lined one side of the street while the stern faces of well-to-do family homes lined the other. Rybkin's house was on a curve in the road, nestled in the crook of a fallow field. A garden several times the size of the house sprawled around it, a gazebo the centerpiece of the front lawn and neat rows of tomatoes and potatoes marched in the back.

Natasha signaled for him to take the rear. Steve didn't need the earpiece to hear when she burst through the front door. Steve slammed through the back, shield in one hand, grenade in the other. Steve found himself in the bedroom and he pushed through into the sitting area.

The man standing in the living room was tall with a shaggy mop of dark hair. He wore a dirty woolen coat and dark pants, and had Natasha pinned down with a gun and a steady hand. His left hand was still locked around the throat of a man Steve assumed was Rybkin. "Move and the Widow dies."

It was like a sucker punch; the voice was familiar but the accent was wrong. Steve froze, hands at his sides.

"Why are you here, Natalia?" the man who had been Bucky asked. They were both as still as photographs, Natasha appraising, Winter Soldier... Steve couldn't tell what he was doing or thinking, but the curve of that man's spine spoke of danger and death, and his confident stance said experience and command. Steve had no idea what the grenade would do short-range, but he thumbed the catch on the one in his hand. Stark built good tech - it was a silent trigger. Silently voicing a prayer that he wouldn't blow his thumbs or balls off, Steve gave a count of five.

Steve had come to expect a certain level of panache from Stark Tech. A clock radio, old television set and the microwave shorted out in puffs of acrid smoke at the same instant that Winter Soldier's arm, still holding Rybkin's corpse, went completely slack. Steve leapt into action at the same instant Natasha did. A shot was fired but went wide. Steve got a thick forearm wrapped around Bucky's throat while Natasha simply kicked him in the groin as hard as she could manage, which was astoundingly hard.

Steve would have winced if he wasn't busy ducking the flailings of the Soldier's right arm as he tried to choke him out. Natasha hit him in the head a few times, and when he didn't appear to be going down, lined up a shot and hit him a cross-hook squarely to the temple. The Soldier slumped, slurring.

Steve kept his grip on Winter Soldier's throat, but moved to cradle him as he fell. Winter Soldier's shoulders were in his lap, his head pressed to Steve's chest. He brushed the dark hair - long and unruly - out of the man's face and it was Bucky. Devastatingly, horribly, wonderfully Bucky. "You're okay. You're going to be okay, Buck," Steve murmured, clutching a hold of the familiar chest. He pressed a quick kiss to Bucky's temple.

"Steve?" Bucky asked, slurring almost beyond the point of recognition. "You got watch, okay?" He passed out without another word.  
\--  
The medical facility they got routed to was an infirmary below a family house at the outskirts of town. The Winter Soldier was a hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight. They didn't stay longer than necessary to check for a concussion and get some strong sedatives.

"You know how I feel about prisoner transport duty," Clint said when they loaded him back into the Quinjet.

"I know, darling. It's just this once. He's drugged enough for a super soldier and then some. And you _know_ how good I am at a blow to the head when necessary." Natasha gave Clint's cabin-view mirror a meaningful look.

"He's trussed tight," Steve added.

"I'm sure you know your way around binding a fella up. I'm just saying you should be appreciating how much I'm going through for y'all's sake."

"Never say 'y'all' again," Natasha added.

"What's the plan?" Clint asked, putting his headset back on. The medical staff had rested an IV bag on Winter Soldier’s stomach and transferred him to one of the benches, strapped in for transit like sensitive equipment.

"I don't want to take him back to SHIELD HQ," Steve said with finality.

"They might be the only ones with containment cells that could hold this guy," Clint pointed out.

They were silent for a moment while the medical staff handed them stacks of papers.

"We have a Hulk-proof room," Natasha countered, "and Doctor Ross would be qualified to take care of him physically."

"You know what he'll be working through." Clint rubbed his thumb across his jaw thoughtfully. "He might need more care than we can provide."

"You cared for me. I'll care for him." Natasha's face hardened with resolve.

"But you might-"

"I'll be there for him too. Tony said he would bring in any specialists we need," Steve interrupted Clint. "If we can get him into Stark Tower before SHIELD can get a bead on us, I would feel a lot better."

"Fury will do his damndest to pry him out of our fingers." Clint eyed them speculatively. "I can file a flight plan to the Oslo facility and go to radio silence. Unregistered flight plans over New York can be pretty dicey though."

Natasha glanced between Steve and Clint. "Do it. We can notify them just before violating airspace."

Steve didn't remember when it had happened, but he'd dropped into a crouch by Winter Soldier's head, laying a palm on his collarbone. His chest rose and fell reassuringly, though there was a slight wheezing hitch in his breath from Steve's recent choke-out.

Natasha crouched down with him, brushing hair almost tacky with oil out of Winter Soldier's face and cupping his cheek with her palm. This man that was Bucky was older than Steve remembered - the first streaks of silver showed through his dark hair. Lines and scars marked his face from cuts and punches and _time_ that Steve hadn't been there for. "Geeze, Bucky - we've just been leapfrogging around each other through time, haven't we?" Steve very gently hugged the completely unconscious man, unsure if he would allow it when he was awake.  
\--  
Betty Ross eyed the Worry Crew standing outside the Hulk Containment Room looking in at the medical equipment set up around Winter Soldier. With one last look at her patient, she left to talk with them.

"He's stable. He was severely dehydrated and malnourished. He had an extreme electrolyte imbalance and his cortisol levels were through the roof. I gave some samples to Bruce to see if there are foreign compounds in his blood, or any trace of super serum, but if you guys hadn't taken him down he probably would have collapsed from exhaustion pretty soon. I think he may be suffering from underlying neurological problems, too. There's external evidence that he's had brain surgery; it's possible your EMP shorted out something in his skull. MRI seemed like a bad idea, given that possibility."

"But he's going to be okay?" Darcy asked, squeezing Clint's hand.

"Physically, he should probably be up and around in the next few days. He'll need at least a few weeks to recover - he looks like he's been on the run for a few months."

"That would fit with our timeline," Natasha agreed.

"I'd like to get Stark in to look at the prosthesis. I'm not sure if it's been permanently powered down or if it will reboot itself, so if we could get it off, that would be best for safety’s sake. If it tried to re-network with whatever is in his head it might do more damage. I'm keeping him under with Natasha's sedative dosing protocol scaled up for bodyweight. It seems to be doing the trick thus far but we need a psychologist for when he wakes up. There's likely to be severe memory issues, behavioral control problems and a good deal of depression."

"That's par for the course, Doctor," Clint said amiably.

In that moment, Tony appeared, large tool box in hand, and in his engineering clothes - heavy boots, dark jeans and a tank with a hole for the arc reactor to shine through. JARVIS opened the containment door for Tony and Steve had to hold himself back from rushing in. Tony dropped the tool box with a clang and popped it open. He handed Betty a thing that looked like a shark egg, and a tube of gel. “I put this together so we could look in his brain without the MRI. It’s like an ultrasound but.. JARVIS... with the 3D Mapping.” Tony waved his hands as though that would explain things, before pulling out a variety of tools that looked home-made or at the least taken apart and put back together differently. There was a lot of electrical tape involved.

Betty seemed to know what to do with the ultrasound which left Tony to prod at the prosthetic arm. Steve had visually shied away from it during the flight over but found himself unable to look away as Tony explored. Clint nudged shoulders with him while Darcy folded herself under his arm, melting against his side in a show of solidarity. The prosthetic left arm was silver and a precise mirror to the right in length and form down to the broad palms Steve remembered from before. A red star on the shoulder was the only adornment, and otherwise overlapping silver plates made up the banding pattern across the rest of it. Tony found something to activate with a probe on the scapular region, and was able to pry up the plates.

“Your friend is like the fucking Terminator or something,” Darcy said with awe. The play of artificial muscles and the line of metallic bone was just visible in flashes as Tony manipulated the arm’s plates. Tony had a few implements shoved in his mouth and appeared to be trying to track the flow of electricity through the appendage, if the sporadic twitches were anything to go by. Tony grunted.

“How did he get that?” Clint was leaning into him lightly as he asked the question.

“I honestly have no idea. This is all so... I have no idea how any of this happened. Last I knew of Bucky he fell off a train in the Alps into a gorge. We had a wake.”

“And yet,” Clint gestured towards the unconscious man in containment.

“Ah-HAH!” Tony crowed in victory, detaching the prosthetic with an audible click. He then lost his grip on it, dropping it to the floor with a weighty ‘thunk’. “Fuck,” a pause. “We’re good - it’s good.” He picked it up and put it on one of the rolling medical trays which bent slightly under the weight. “This is... This is actually not bad for a shady black market Soviet job,” Tony said, turning his attention to the adapter socket left on Bucky’s shoulder. Metal wrapped around where his collarbone joined with it and seamlessly joined with Bucky’s ribcage, making it look like a chunk was missing from his chest. “I can work with this,” Tony mused, turning to address them. “Once I get a workup on the cybernetics in his chest, and get whatever is in his brain jump started we should be golden. I could probably upgrade him even.”

“No upgrades.” Natasha’s black look and Tony’s unholy glee clashed with no clear winner. “Just make sure he’s not going to have an aneurism or something.”

“I’m not seeing any blood clots,” Betty said, manipulating the somewhat grainy 3D image JARVIS displayed for her. “There is something nestled in the motor center of his brain which I can only assume is how he controls the arm. It appears to still be in one piece with an intact biofilm so I’m inclined to leave it for the moment.”

“It’s putting out a weak wireless signal. It seems to be getting power still. If we can leave it in and build on whatever programming is already in there it’ll make the cybernetics one hell of a lot easier.” Tony puttered around for a bit conversing with JARVIS about electronics and brain imaging before scuttling off to his lab with the prosthetic but alarmingly human arm.

The four of them stayed, staring through the observation windows until Ross finally shooed them off. “Go away! He’s sedated, he’s going to stay sedated. He will not be awake for at least the next twenty-four hours. Go do something besides staring at me and violating this poor man’s privacy.”

“You’re sure he won’t wake up?” Steve asked.

“He will not be conscious until I say so. We need to get his blood analyzed and see if he has any psychoactives still in his system before we can let that happen. He needs fluids, he needs rest, and I need time.” Betty’s eyes flashed. It was clear that this woman was used to dealing with things much bigger and scarier than worried pseudo-family.  
\--  
Knocking woke Steve from fitful rest. "Whu— JARVIS?" Steve scrubbed his face and sat up.

"Director Fury to see you, Sir," JARVIS responded crisply.

"Huh?" Between Tony, Pepper, Natasha and Clint, they had managed to keep SHIELD occupied and Fury out of the Tower and by extension, the entire Winter Soldier fiasco.

"I'm afraid I was unable to keep him out with non-lethal security protocols." JARVIS sounded distressed. Only Tony could build an AI that indulged in a guilt trip. Steve got to the door and struggled into pants.

"Director," Steve greeted, throwing open the door.

Fury raised an eyebrow at his half-dressed super soldier. He swept in, black coattails billowing behind him. "I know you have captured the Winter Soldier. I know he is being held here. And I know he is one Lieutenant James Buchanan Barnes, formerly of the Howling Commandos, presumed dead in 1943." Fury stared him down for a moment allowing the words to sink in.

Steve settled into a parade rest which matched the stance Fury had fallen into. "Sir." Steve wasn't going to deny it, but neither was he going to give up any information. Working with the Director had trained his natural order-following inclinations out of him rather quickly.

"I realize that you clowns think you know best, and big bad SHIELD is out to get you, but I need you to listen carefully to what I am about to say." A pause. "I need access to the Winter Soldier's biometrics, tissue and blood samples right the fuck now. I know you think we're all evil and out to take your little friend away from you or some bullshit, but quite honestly? I don't care."

"Sir." Steve was confused and suspicious. Mostly suspicious.

"I'm not going to tell you why I need those things, but I will tell you this. I promise you, if you do not get those to me as soon as humanly possible, you will regret the results for the rest of your life. You strike me as a man with enough regrets already." Fury favored him with a parting glare and left without waiting for a response.  
\--  
Bruce was the last one to show up to the team meeting, tapping on a tablet and frowning. Tony looked disheveled in the way he did when he was working full-tilt on a project. Clint and Natasha curled on either side of Darcy on the couch. Doctor Ross was frowning into a mug of tea.

Steve couldn't stop pacing.

"JARVIS - could you replay the conversation with Director Fury please?" Steve asked as Bruce settled next to Doctor Ross. Heads swiveled and they all watched silently. "This wasn't a decision I wanted to make alone. You are all involved in this, one way or another." The truth was, Steve knew how poorly he could read the Director. He couldn't imagine that anybody was _good_ at it, but the rest of the team had more experience with Fury in this sort of high-stakes situation. The military would want the information Bucky's body held for the same reasons they wanted to study Bruce, but the way Fury had stated his demand, there was a specific and immediate need.

"Fury would not be so foolish as to attempt to breach the Tower's security to obtain the samples and information," Natasha stated.

"So if we decided to not fork them over he wouldn't come take them," Darcy reasoned. Natasha nodded.

"He has no legal claims and no moral right to the samples," Doctor Ross added, thoughtful. "Barnes' ability to consent is compromised and he _has_ no next of kin. We could be considered his guardians, but—"

"This is so beyond a HIPAA matter that it's kind of irrelevant," Bruce broke in.

"Our responsibility is to the _patient_ ," Ross insisted.

Bruce curled in on himself just a bit. "I don't think the patient would appreciate his samples being shared around with the military."

"If Fury's telling the truth then it might be that James _would_ give his consent if he were mentally competent." There was so much that the Winter Soldier information might be useful for. It could very well be that Fury suspected James was in danger from an unknown biological source.

"That can be a big 'if' with Fury. He will do what he has to, to get what he thinks needs to get done, done." Clint mostly looked tired at the words. "I disagree with his methods a lot, but only rarely with his motivations."

"Tony?"

Tony's goatee had been twitching in an agitated manner through frowns and winces. He was the embodiment of internal conflict.

"He's afraid of something."

The room was abruptly silent and still.

"Care to elaborate?" Steve asked.

"Fury doesn't get scared. He gets murderous," Clint added dubiously.

"He is scared of... something." Tony shook his head, frustrated by his own lack of specificity. "It's something out of his sphere of influence." They all stared at Tony. "What do you want? A psychic? Call Xavier. Play it again." JARVIS obliged and Tony watched it intently while everyone else watched Tony. "It's something personal," he said after a pause.

"Why do you say that?"

"He's trying to act like his normal hardass self but that bit at the end? He's desperate and he's trying not to show it and he is willing to fight dirty with you to get what he wants. He never brings SHIELD's influence into it and he never tries to use legal or perceived obligations to the government or the Avengers; just a personal appeal." Tony threw the piece of wire he was fiddling with in the trash with a disgusted grunt.

Steve turned to Natasha who narrowed her eyes and gave the barest bit of a nod.

"Do we have any idea what he could want the samples for? I mean, does anybody know what happened to Bucky that someone would be interested in? Aside from the freezing and thawing and the cybernetics thing?" Darcy asked.

"He was captured by HYDRA and experimented on for thirty-six hours. He had been left for dead by the scientists during the attack." Steve tried to remember more from the attack, or from the reports he had helped the injured returnees fill out in the aftermath. Chilblains and broken fingers had been common enough among them that even Captain America had been enlisted to help with transcription. "Some of the men had been put on duty digging pits for mass graves. They said most of the men dropped in them had been taken for experimentation. At the time people wrote it off as sick Nazi stuff, but I read some HYDRA debriefs from after I crashed which implied that they thought Schmidt was testing prototype serums based on Erskine's on the Commandos."

Bruce turned thunderous, reaching out wordlessly for Betty's hand. Natasha's gaze was flicking rapidly around the room, measuring responses and calculating. "That is what he is after," she said decisively. "It is an attenuated, but much more mutable version of the serum."

"In English, Tash?" Natasha rolled her eyes at Clint.

"It's weaker but more versatile. Winter Soldier was used to develop the Red Room serum."

"What is wrong with people? Hasn't this quest for the perfect soldier ruined enough lives?" Bruce muttered the words to himself but the rest of the room had gone abruptly silent and they were clearly discernible.

"Fury never expressed much interest in our project, Bruce. It was always my father pushing it through appropriations. Fury had some choice things to say about the wisdom of creating metahumans for combat if I remember correctly." Betty was frowning. "The Director never trusted metahumans, even ones the government had created."

Darcy raised her hand. "Let's assume Director Fury isn't interested in the supersoldier mold to stamp out his own little army with. Where does that leave us?"

"He's desperate and it's about something personal. We don't _have_ to give it to him but by all appearances Fury at least believes we'd regret withholding the samples. I can't even begin to imagine what he would need that information for," Steve summarized.

"Does it matter?" Clint asked, shrugging. "It comes down to whether you believe him when he says you'll regret it. Or whether it is one of those situations where you'll regret it no matter what you do. So it's up to you."

"He won't force you but it might be best to get him what he has asked for," Natasha said calmly. Tony scowled at her. In return she turned her china doll blank face on him, which made him shudder.

Steve knew he looked mullish, but he nodded. "Okay."

"No!" Tony jumped from his slouch, hands raised as though to physically stop their thought processes. "Not 'no' as in don't do it, but wait. We're in a position of power here. He wants what we got. We don't have to give it to him. This is the _perfect_ point to bring in a little negotiation prowess."  
\--  
Steve deeply, intensely, fervently appreciated that his team came from different backgrounds with different skills and histories. Say what you would about Tony's incompetence at keeping a business running; the fact was that he had run a Fortune 500 company starting when he was a teenager. He negotiated like Natasha fought; with elegance, grace, and a ruthlessness which most only used defending their lives.

It was agreed that Doctor Ross would accompany the samples and data, and would be privy to all classified details pertaining to the samples' use. She would be responsible for treatment of said classified projects and oversight of any new treatments developed as their results.

Steve secretly worried that James would come to some harm without his loyal and capable doctor immediately at hand, but Bruce assured him that she was only a phone call away if it came down to it. He followed Doctor Ross around her lab while she packed samples into a cooler, loaded all the data she thought necessary on a removable hard drive, and prepared James' final injections, until she reached up and cupped his cheek. He stilled under her light touch, and she rose on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. "He's going to be fine. I'll go find out what is going on and get back as soon as it's wise."

Steve blushed. "I know you will. Thank you again. I wouldn't ask you to risk yourself like this, but—"

"Nicholas got me out of the clink when my father had me locked up for my own safety. He's a kitten, really."

Steve snorted in surprise and disbelief. He couldn't imagine anybody calling Fury by his full first name, much less referring to him as a kitten and living to see morning. His admiration for her rose even higher.

"Still. Thank you."

She crinkled a little smile at him and handed over the cooler for him to carry to the car.  
\--  
Doctor Ross was gone for several days. Bruce got terse updates from her via a video link by which he satisfied himself that she wasn't being coerced. Bucky remained largely unconscious through Bruce's dosings. When he was conscious he spoke only in Russian or something that Natasha told him was Slovakian, and was entirely incoherent. He sat by the bedside and Bucky’s restraints for nearly two days straight until Darcy came and got him.

"Come on, Captain. It's lonely in the apartment and serum or not, you need a shower." She looked lonely. Steve gripped Bucky’s hand and received a barely detectible tightening of that hand in return, before turning to Darcy. She held her arms open and he pulled her into a hug. She tucked neatly beneath his chin and he kissed the top of her head. Her breath was warm against his chest, even through his shirt. Her hair smelled of woman and the spicy shampoo Clint favored, and it caught in the stubble he had allowed to accumulate on his chin.

"I'll be back soon, Bucky," Steve told his unconscious friend. Bucky’s eyes twitched under his eyelids but he didn't respond.

Darcy pulled back and looked into his face. "JARVIS will tell us if anything changes. Come on."

Because he knew she liked it, Steve lifted her into a bridal carry and took them both to his apartment. Darcy tended to kick, so maneuvering her through his front door was a bit of a trial, but then he was perfectly situated to set her on the kitchen counter. Darcy shrugged out of her shirt and bra and shimmied out of her skirt. She turned on the kettle while he made a sandwich. He scarfed it down while she played with a teabag and then steeped a pot of his tea.

Steve's hair was greasy and unkempt and his head felt cottony. The serum protected him from most physical discomfort from not taking care of himself, but the psychological discomfort was completely beyond its purview. Steve surmised that Erskine would have hated if the serum anesthetized the pains of the soul. "I should get some exercise. That might clear out the cobwebs." Darcy raised her eyebrows at him. Steve kissed her lightly on the mouth. "Thank you for tearing me away. I have a hard time... doing that," referring to taking care of himself, and letting go when he needed to, and waiting.

He moved towards his room to change but Darcy fisted his shirt front and jumped him, wrapping her thighs around her hips. He broadened his stance a bit so she wouldn't slide off him and she wrapped an arm around his shoulders, levering herself up for a long, dirty kiss. Her tongue was as soft as her lips and she made deliciously eager sounds. When they broke for breath she whispered in his ear, "I can think of ways to exercise you right here." She bit and twisted his lip and mussed and pulled his hair and the bit of pain mixed in with his arousal seemed perfectly right. He pressed her back against the wall to get more leverage in his kiss.

She was wearing panties and nothing else, which Steve took advantage of. Her breasts were generous and soft and she enjoyed when he played with them gently. She shivered deliciously when he pinched her nipples which rubbed her panties against his briefs.

In a practiced movement she pulled down the waistband of his briefs, trapping his legs but freeing his cock, and hitched the crotch of her panties to the side. Steve admired a woman who could take charge of a situation even while pinned to the wall. She stroked him a few times, rubbed the head of his cock down the line of her cunt, and sank onto him.

They both gasped, Steve thrusting forward and pressing her into the wall harder, feeling her muscles contract in an involuntary spasm. The angle was intense but between Steve’s unnatural strength and Darcy’s leverage with her thighs, it was remarkably easy to maintain. Steve bit her where her shoulder and neck met and took a brief moment to be thankful for modern contraceptive methods and STD testing as he rocked into Darcy’s warm, slick pussy. Her legs wrapped around the small of his back and pulled until they were flush and she could grind her clit against him. He palmed her butt cheeks and returned to kissing her. Darcy wasn't in the same peak physical condition which Natasha boasted, but she had powerful inner thighs which squeezed around his hips with a satisfying pressure.

Darcy was loud during sex. She groaned, she cursed, she squeaked endearingly and she panted, shallow and wrecked as though his cock was so deeply inside her it was compressing her lungs. “Counter,” she panted, waving at the kitchen counter.

Steve frowned, distracted and disapproving. “We eat off of those—”

“Oh my god Clint and I have sex on the counters all the time - we clean them down after.”

Steve shrugged and gripped Darcy’s buttocks, swinging them both to a clear space on the kitchen counter. He pulled out of her long enough to drag down her panties and kick off his own briefs before lining up and pushing into her once more. Her juices had slicked her from clit to ass cheeks and they met with a soft, wet sound. She leaned back, bracing her hands on the cupboard handles and displaying her breasts to good effect. Her knees ran up his ribs and he pulled her in using her butt.

Darcy arched, displaying her breasts and moved a hand to stroke her clit. Steve buried his nose in the valley between her breasts and breathed in the warm, sweet scent of her.

Darcy's hands were all over him; in his hair, down his chest, smoothing and scratching across his back. He drowned in her warmth, her soft, filthy words, and the slick clutch and drag of her spasming around his cock. He closed his eyes and nestled his nose in the crook of her neck, pressing light kisses against her collarbone, pleasure sheeting through him and gathering in his core.

"That's it baby, I got you. Just like that." Darcy stroked through his hair, hand settling at the nape of his neck. He cupped her breasts, a feat even for his large hands, and pinched her erect nipples. "Ohgodyespleasemore." He stroked his thumbs over them and pinched again. "You'd better be okay with me coming," she growled, grinding into him. She pulled his head from her shoulder for a kiss, muffling a loud moan against his mouth as she came. He came a half-dozen thrusts after her, still kissing hungrily.

Darcy flopped backwards on the counter, splaying out dramatically and banging her elbow on the knife block. "Ow." Steve laughed. "Feel better?" she asked, rubbing her elbow.

He was flushed and felt tingly and warm, but tired enough for a nap. A headache he hadn't know he had was dissipating from behind his eyes. "Yeah." He wiped himself down with a handkerchief he dug out of his pants pocket from the floor, and offered it to Darcy. He kissed her on the hip bone. "Thank you."

"Any time, Cap." She two-finger saluted towards him, still prone. "Think you could drop me in bed? You fucked the get up and go right out of me." She raised her arms up. He got an arm under her shoulders and hoisted her to his chest. She wrapped around him and didn't let go until after they'd both slept in his bed for a few hours.  
\--  
Steve woke feeling more human if not entirely well. Darcy had unwrapped from around him and was making tea. "JARVIS had a message for you when you were up."

"Indeed, Sir. Doctor Ross has returned from SHIELD."

Steve's eyebrows rose. "Thank you. Is she able to talk to us?"

"She's in the kitchen with Doctor Banner. I believe they would be amenable to receiving guests."

"You always make it sound so classy, J," Darcy replied.

"Thank you Ms. Lewis. I do try."

Darcy smiled at Steve, pleased with herself. She enjoyed goading JARVIS into ever multiplying feats of politeness. He often found her conversing with him when she was alone in one of the apartments.

"Well, do you want to see what she has to say?"

"Sure. Eat this and drink this, though. You're looking... not right still." She handed him another sandwich and a mug of tea.

The wafting smell of a stout cup of tea always reminded him of Peggy and his time stationed in England. The slightly bitter floral notes had clung to her hair and uniform regardless of laundering or time of day. The bit of nostalgia was surprisingly just what he needed as they rode the elevator to the penthouse level. The elevator opened to Betty getting her feet rubbed by Bruce. He had the soft, tender look he only seemed to get around her, and she looked exhausted.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but I was hoping you had information for me." Steve sat on the couch opposite the doctors. Darcy faded into the background behind the bar, eavesdropping without making it too obvious.

Betty sighed, "No, it's fine. I wanted to talk to you." Betty was willowy with large dark eyes and a gentle manner. "I signed enough confidentiality agreements that... lets just say I can't tell you the whole story, but here's what I got. SHIELD had some misadventures with cryogenics and one of their field operatives. They suspected they could get enough data from James' samples to fix what they had screwed up."

"So why the cloak and dagger?"

Betty frowned, pained. "It was touch and go, but I think we got the patient in the right direction. I have a feeling it will all get declassified in the next few months, but..." she shrugged, "I'm going to keep patient confidentiality. I ran Stark's scrubber program when I was leaving, so they don't have anything that could be used to start a super-soldier program up again."

"Was Fury telling the truth?" Steve asked quietly.

Betty's smile was tired but beatic, "Yes. I think you'll agree it was the right decision."

"That's— thank you. I can't say that enough." Steve rose and shook her hand. She touched his forearm to bring him towards her and kissed him once more on the cheek. "Fury's a shady bastard but he's our shady bastard. Don't forget it," she said near his ear just above a whisper.  
\--  
"BARTON!"

" _What the fuck_ ," Clint shouted, throwing his bowl of cereal in the air in the process of coming to attention. He had a certain ingrained disregard for authority but his respect for his own life had seniority and that included coming to attention whenever Director Fury surprised him. The cereal rained down like a grainy, sweetened hailstorm.

"Do you want to explain to me what you were doing at a campaign fundraiser last night?"

Two things became immediately apparent to Clint. Firstly: Director Fury was not physically in the room. Secondly: continuing to stay at attention made him look like a real tool. He swiveled around and found Fury's image projected on one of the invisible screens which doubled as a room divider in the huge common area. It was life sized and just as terrifying as the usual Nick Fury was. It was glaring pointedly at him. "Sir?" Clint asked finally.

"The campaign finance director and a staffer were assaulted by an unknown assailant last night. The staffer is fine, but he finance director is likely to be in the hospital for a while." Fury paused for dramatic effect. "He took an arrow to the knee."

Clint's eyebrows went up. "That wasn't me, Sir."

"Who the fuck else would you have me believe was out dispensing vigilante justice with a bow and arrow in New York City?" Fury said with the tone of someone who is done putting up with your shit thank you very much.

"I don't know, but I'd like to meet them."

Fury dropped into a confidential tone, "If it was you, let us know why and we'll work it out."

"It wasn't me! I said it wasn't me! JARVIS - back me up on this."

"Sir was engaged at the range until 8:45PM at which time he took over guard duties for James Barnes from Ms. Romanov. There are video records until roughly 2AM when Captain Rogers relieved him."

The Director mulled that over, his facial hair roiling with discomfit. "You're going to get the heat for this regardless, unless you can track the other player down. This needs to be your first priority. Everything we have will be forwarded within the next thirty minutes. I expect regular updates."

Clint straightened. It was the first time since getting on the shit list again over the Winter Soldier that the Director had given him an explicit project. This rival Robin Hood wannabe was going down.  
\--  
“James is suffering from a few major problems and probably more small ones than I even know what to do with. We’ve been trying to deal with the life-threatening ones up until now and not worrying about non-lethal symptoms. He’s not out of the woods but he’s doing well enough we can start tackling the long-term problems instead of just running around doing emergency fixes.”

“He’s— I’m sorry. I didn’t realize he was in such a bad way,” Steve told Doctor Ross, gripping Natasha and Darcy’s hands for support.

“From what we can tell he was on a lot of drugs - psychoactives, mood stabilizers, a steady, low dose of opiates, and some small molecule inhibitors which haven’t gone anywhere near FDA approval. The opiates are clearing nicely but everything affecting his brain chemistry is... It’s too complex for me to unravel properly. We’ve been dosing him with analogues where there are ones available and hoping that is enough to keep him from serious repercussions and hoping he’ll come down naturally from the ones we can’t replicate. It seems to be working. The neural degradation he was experiencing before we got a hold of him has halted.”

Steve sat heavily. Natasha and Darcy leaned into him from either side, silent bulwarks.

Ross hesitated before speaking again. “While I was at SHIELD I was offered the service of Dr. Czarnecki for as long as this might take.”

Natasha perked at the name. “Yes. We want her. Yes.” Steve and Darcy turned to look at Natasha questioningly. “She was in charge of my deprogramming. She’s the only living expert on Red Room conditioning techniques and psychoactives.”

“I had mentioned before that we would need a psychologist but I didn’t want to bring her in without consulting you first. James is experiencing extended period of lucidity and according to her, involving him in an intensive counseling program early is key.”  
\--  
Natasha stared down at James. Worry lines marred his forehead and his hand twitched and spasmed as though fighting invisible assailants. Dr. Czarnecki had started talk therapy with James while he was still restrained and in a hospital bed. Candidly she had expressed her concern about his progress.

“He’s under constant stress. Everything is strange to him.” Czarnecki was small and slim with a mop of grey curls and thick, square-framed glasses. She clasped her hands in her lap. Her eyes never left James’ prone form in the bed.

“Everything will only get stranger as the memory implants fracture.” Natasha shared a look of understanding with her former doctor.

“You held onto some things better than others in those early days.”

Natasha nodded, casting her thoughts back to the harsh, shattered memories that made up those early days of her reprogramming. Scents had been especially evocative, along with the sound of certain voices.

The memory implants had never wormed their way into the deep, old place where the smell of frying dumpling dough and pickle soup said _home_ and _safe_ and _family_. Piney scents still sent her back to a tumble of memories of snow and greenery and the curious lancing sun that was a wintry mid-day where she was born.

Voices had been her only link to people in those early days. When she opened her eyes washes of faces she thought she might have known or might have killed overlaid those she knew were in the room. She had found it so hard to remember who was really there and who was just a lively memory until she struck on the voices.

“He’ll need a little more time, but I’d like to get him out of this facility and into somewhere with a bit more permanence. Steven has expressed a desire to take him in - apparently they used to live together even before the war. Steven’s routine might jog some memories and ease the transition.”

It was still a week before Stark’s pushy medical staff would let James out of their infirmary. They left Steve with strict orders regarding diet and rest, and Czarnecki warned him repeatedly that his friend was not the man he used to know.

The first day in Steve’s apartment James slept and ate and slept again. Czarnecki came and talked with him for a while when he was awake and left an armada of pills for him to take at his next meal. Steve floated around his apartment wishing Natasha was back from SHIELD. He sketched a few messy tangles that tried to be figures but gave up. Sounds of stirring in his bedroom brought him to James, just waking in his bed from a nap. He looked up at Steve with a hollow-eyed expression of confusion and loss which flickered on and off as though James was repeatedly forgetting that he had lost something and once more remembering it, experiencing the loss just as keenly over and over again.

"What do you need?" Steve asked, meaning the question in so many ways. He stood just inside the doorway of his own bedroom, having learned James would switch into his leery, danger assessment modality if he lounged in the doorway as he was used to. James made a twitch through his neck, ending at the stumpy socket in his shoulder. Steve had come to recognize that movement as him trying to use his absent cybernetic arm. It seemed to reset his thoughts. James quirked a bitter, sardonic smile at him and raised his right hand to rake through his hair in a gesture so familiar that Steve smiled at the sharp pang in his heart.

"I could use a wash."

"Sure. Do you need-" James pushed away from the pillows, scooting to the edge of the bed before Steve could offer to help. "The bathroom is right through here." James' feet hit the carpet and his knees and feet were knobbly, speaking of weeks of deprivation. That put an entirely different sort of pang in his chest. He pushed himself upright and only swayed a little, walking to the bathroom. The socket on his shoulder looked too large for his painfully spare frame and he lurched a bit with each step - off balance from his missing limb. "There's soap in there. Just shout when you're done."

Steve waited until the water turned on before going to the kitchen and putting leftovers in the oven to heat. Natasha let herself into the apartment, dropping a bag of nutritional beverages on the counter, and slipped out of her sundress. She stilled, determining James was in the bathroom from the sound of rushing water, and went to check on him. The shower shut off some time after. Steve sorted and stored the beverages and set a timer for the oven before he let himself check on them.

The bathroom door was open and he could just hear Natasha's gentling tones. His shaving kit was out on the counter, brush resting in the foamy bowl. Natasha was perched on James' lap as he sat on the toilet, head resting back on the towel rack. Foam covered most of his face and Natasha was wielding Steve's straight razor with expert grace. Every few strokes, James' fist would clench, little tremors running through his as though he was suppressing movement only by a savage force of will. Natasha would speak quietly, fingers carding through his hair until he relaxed once more. She would then continue.

He had known the Bucky of his youth - a street kid and a bit of a con man, a womanizer when he was old enough to pull the dames, and practical to a fault. He'd known the Bucky from after the rescue - harder, cynical, vicious and ruthless, but with the underlying charm, grace and honor that made it easy to forget that his friend had left Brooklyn a kid and turned into an experienced, competent killer.

This was a new man, but Steve was unsure how much of that was Bucky's changing over time, and how much of it was Steve's guilt, longing, and loneliness layering a patina of nostalgia on to the memories of his old friend. This Bucky - this James - was haunted. He was strong and ruthless. He had the same sardonic look but there was venom to back it up now that had never been there before. Steve imagined he could see the ache of hopelessness playing in the muscles of James' face. He imagined that it was echoes of decades of being lost, and controlled, and utterly without personal desires; the loss of being emptied out and filled back up again with someone new. This was the Black Widow's maestro.

Natasha finished up without an artistic flourish - efficient to the end - and wiped the flecks of soap off his face with a damp towel. One bright spot of blood stood out under his chin on the left, and she wiped it with a dab of witchazel before rising. Bucky remained prone, arm relaxed and clenching alternately while Natasha cleaned the kit and returned it to its place.

"There's food," Steve broke the silence and it felt like the quiet and respite shattered and fell to the floor, jagged and raw.

Natasha's and James' faces swiveled as one, mirrored assessing, blank expressions appraising him. Natasha broke a wry smile at him and wove around him to the kitchen. James' face abruptly took on a wry smile of its own - almost a twin of Natasha's, and Steve felt a cold angry shiver writhe down his spine. It was as though they had been programmed from the same template, he thought, and then Bucky was rolling his shoulders and hunching to rest his arm across his knees.

"Geeze it was hard to not get a stiffie with her in my lap, in that getup." James said, and it wasn't how he used to be, but it was the reflection of the man Steve had known.

Steve grinned, "It's a good thing you made the effort with her that close to your neck with my knife," he said, and took the relaxation of tension down James' spine as an invitation.

"Grub?" James asked, sounding hopeful, and exhausted.

"Yeah. You want a hand?" he asked, after a pause.

"No," James retorted, "but I'm weak as a drowned kitten so you better give it to me anyway."

Steve helped him to his feet and hunched under his right arm to act as a human crutch. His own left arm snaked around James' waist, palm pressed firmly against James' hip bone, effectively adhering them together. They made it to the couch where Natasha had helpfully arranged a bedding nest.

The way James dropped into the blankets, Steve could tell he would desperately have liked to collapse and curl up in the nest. Instead he sat rigidly, hand on his thigh. Steve looked to Natasha who shrugged.

In a graceful movement, she knelt by his leg and put a plate on James' lap. She took another plate and began eating off of it with her fingers. Steve stood a moment, awkward, until she gestured with her head for him to sit.

He sat next to James who tensed. Like a ripple going through them, Natasha and Steve tensed in sympathy.

"Could you, uh-" James cleared his throat, "sit on the other side?" He said it sounding tense and embarrassed.

"Sure," Steve replied, trying his hardest not to sound sad. "No problem." He had sat at James' left, unconsciously guarding his weak side, but that obviously made James uncomfortable. He settled on James' other side, slotting his legs behind Natasha's back.

Only when he was eating did James relax slightly and begin eating himself. James ate slowly but methodically, starting with the protein (meatballs), moving on to the vegetable (long green beans in butter and tiny bright red tomatoes), and ending with the starch (roasted potatoes).

"That was good," James said, sucking his fingers clean.

"Steve made it," Natasha said, resting her head on James' leg. He carded his fingers through her short hair in an absent-minded motion.

"Do you want more?" Steve asked, trying not to stare at the gauntness in his friend's face. Too much of their lives, Steve had spent seeing that gauntness from one type of deprivation or another. He could fix that now and he felt a surprisingly acute need to do just that.

"Yeah. Okay. I guess I should." James offered his plate and Steve refilled it. He systematically emptied it once more and went back to petting a preternaturally still Natasha. Slowly, James' strokes slowed and his head slumped down.

Natasha gestured with her eyes for him to get the plate and clear out. She murmured in Russian to him. She took the hand that was in her hair and slid her own palm into it and held him firmly by the back of the neck, guiding him down into a prone position in the bedding. She whispered something in his ear before settling his legs up on the couch and wrapping him in the blankets.

Natasha seemed to be of the opinion that you could never be too well wrapped while sleeping. It must have been a Russian thing, but Steve couldn't complain; James looked much less vulnerable wrapped in a quilt, pillowed on a blanket, and with an afghan thrown all over the top of him.

Steve gazed helplessly at his friend. Natasha took his hand firmly and led him back into the bedroom.

"I feel so helpless," Steve admitted after she'd sat him on the bed.

"I know." Natasha pursed her lips. "I know what the programming he's wading through is like. I'm the more recent thing in his life right now. I'm sure you'll be important, once-" Natasha stopped her self. "When he's more himself I'm sure you'll be what he needs. Right now he needs something familiar, and I guess that's a bit of a taste of the Red Room." Natasha shrugged, her slim shoulders anything but delicate. Right then Steve felt like she was holding up his world with those shoulders.

"He doesn't trust me." Steve sighed and lay back on his bed.

"He doesn't trust anyone right now. He doesn't trust himself. The only reason he listens to me is the programming. It's going to get much, much worse before he gets better."

Steve clenched his jaw tightly to keep from looking scared, but just managed to looked scared and tense at the same time. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Natasha said it with finality and just the barest hint of dread. "He's going to stop trusting himself right about the time he stops reacting to me from the programming. That's the real reason I asked Stark to keep the cybernetic arm. He's going to be unmanageable without it, but with it he could kill us both."

Steve paled, feeling queasy. "You think?" he asked weakly.

"You saw his track record. He taught me most of what I know, and he hasn't aged much since I was sixteen. With the strength enhancement from the cybernetics, and whatever he got from that bastardized super soldier serum that Zola fed him... He's the most deadly man I know, and I don't say that lightly."

Steve felt tears welling up without his permission. The thought of his friend going through whatever it was he went through to turn him into the man that Natasha was describing. It was horrifying. It was worse than he could even imagine. "I'll be here. When it gets bad I mean."

"You don't need to be. Thor and Clint both said they'd help out, and James never knew them so-"

"I want to be here. He needs to have a friendly face around, even if that friendly face is forcibly restraining him for his own safety. It wouldn't be the first time I had to sit on him to keep him from getting himself killed."

Natasha curled against his side, head resting in the crook of his arm. He played his fingers through her hair like James had been doing earlier. "How did that happen?" she asked.

"Huh?" Steve asked cogently.

"The last time you had to sit on him to keep him from doing something rash. Tell me about that."

Steve might have taken her request as a distraction tactic - an attempt to get him thinking about better times so he wouldn't obsess over the gaunt shell of his old friend, but she said it with a softness he rarely heard. He suspected that she was asking for more than just an old war story. She was asking for a story about her mentor, her lover, and one of the few people who would know what she went through at the hands of the Red Room. She was asking to know about where he came from.

"Geeze. Bucky - James - he was a hard one to keep track of. I mean, all the Commandos were their own men, but Bucky... After I busted him out of Zola's, he was so angry - out to prove himself. Do you know we had an argument once about whether he could hide his K-31 sniper rifle down the leg of his pants by pretending to be a cripple? He wouldn't let go of the idea until I made him shove the thing down his leg and try to walk around without looking like a guy with four and a half feet of rifle shoved down his pants. 'No, Steve, this is fine - nobody will question it. People hate looking at cripples,' he said. I just kept telling him, 'No, Bucky, that'll never work,' and he kept saying, 'Steve - just give me a reason other than 'no' and I'll drop it'." Steve laughed and shook his head. Natasha hummed contentedly when his fingers ran down her scalp.

"The last time I really had to sit on him had to have been our last sorties in France."

~April 1943 - the Anjou region of France, outside the regional Kommandantur in Angers~

The city of Angers had been suffering under Nazi occupation for more than two full years - longer than Steve had been in training, on tour, and in combat combined. The Commandos had been sent out on a sortier to cripple the functionality of some of the regional airstrips (usually with a good bit of explosives) and to monitor the effects of allied airstrikes on regional targets. It meant a lot of cold nights on the march and a lot of long days huddled under hedgerows to keep off the radar of Nazi patrols. They were in contact with the _Honneur_ for intel from within the city, but the resistance forces were limited to light provisioning and the occasional smuggled missive.

They hadn't seen action in a week. Dugan was on watch and had unmounted his .55 cal rifle from his bike to clean it with his steady hands. His mustache twitched occasionally. Otherwise the men were sacked out. Steve was dozing in tthe late spring warmth. The French countryside was everything he had hoped beautiful countryside could be. If he hadn't spent the last two weeks riding through it, trying to avoid being shot and trying to keep his men in hand, it would have had more impact. As it was, he was musing on what to do to keep everyone from doing something stupid or sloppy - get in a firefight just because they were bored or sneak out to toss some farmer's daughter - when a slight scuff of fabric and greenery moving down the hedgerow alerted him to someone returning to the camp.

He did a quick head count. Morita wasn't in visual range but he had done double shifts yesterday between guard duty and working on his rig aside from their all night march; he was dead to the world just far enough down the hedge to avoid Jones' snuffling snores. The only one missing was Bucky.

Steve rolled and crawled to where the shuffling sounds were still issuing. Bucky was pretending to be asleep by the time Steve crawled to him but there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead denoting recent activity. "Bucky?" Steve asked, rolling to flop next to Bucky on his blanket. It reminded him of nights in the orphanage when they'd bed down together to keep warm. The feeling of his friend at his shoulder was comfortable.

Bucky snorted. "Don't suppose I could convince you I was asleep," Bucky stated, more than asked.

"Where were you? What were you doing?" Steve _knew_ that Bucky was aware of the danger he had put the unit in by sneaking off.

Bucky wiped his fingers across his forehead, putting a few streaks of muddy dust down his temples. "You're not going to like it," Bucky warned.

"I don't think I will, but tell me anyways."

"There's a farmhouse about four miles south-east with contacts with the _Honneur et Patrie_ that I was arranging some things with."

Steve frowned. The _Honneur_ ran a tight ship since a whole host of their people were outed and executed the previous year. It had been a hell of a time for the Commandos to get more than the time of day out of them. Why Bucky felt the need to sneak off to consult with them... "Arrange what?"

Bucky glanced at him, shifting once, and running a hand through his hair. "You're not going to believe this."

"Try me."

"Right. So they got word that Goering is going to be staying in Angers for three nights, starting tonight."

"You're right; I don't believe it."

"No, listen, listen." Bucky shifted to his side to look Steve in the face. "The Allied bombers are hitting the _Luftwaffe_ especially hard between the hangars and supply warehouses, so Goering is out to get their air forces into shape."

"Okay." Steve still didn't know how that would lead to Bucky needing to set anything up.

"So that crazy fuck is going to be not fifteen miles from here, tonight and for the next three days." Steve eyed Bucky's bruised eyes and sunken cheeks, still not recovered from his time with Zola. "I'm going to kill that fucking Kraut."

The plan Bucky outlined was... okay, it was pretty good, but it did not provide a lot of room for Bucky actually surviving it and getting back home. Bucky had worked out with the _Honneur_ that he could get a ride in on the garbage cart, rifle strapped to the bottom. One filthy country boy looked a lot like any other filthy country boy, and the heat from summer coming on meant they smelled enough to keep the sentries from sniffing too close. He would hide out in a basement while his rifle was smuggled into position in a roll of fabric from the fabric mill by the river. He'd have roughly five hours to make it to his gun. From there, he was going to travel across a few roofs and get into position about eighty meters from the front door of the swankiest inn in town. Goering would be staying there. The only window for the shot would come as Goering exited the inn to be picked up by his chauffeur.

"And then what?"

"I get the fuck out of there."

"HOW, Buck? You will -not- make it out."

"And if I don't? That's the HEAD of the _Luftwaffe_ that I could cut off with one bullet. This is as good a chance as I've ever heard of. The infrastructure is there. I can get that shot. Eighty meters I could do in my sleep in the dark, Steve. He's not Hitler, but he's goddamned close."

"You. Would. Not. Come. Back," Steve bit out, shifting to face Bucky. "It's a good plan up until then, but I can't have everyone going on a suicide run whenever a cherry target pops up."

"I can do this. I could get back, too."

"If you give me a plan - a way I don't have to hear about you shot or tortured to death - we can consider it. But if you died on some crazy assault I okayed because it was too good to pass up? I couldn't live with that. You know I couldn't." Gently he palmed Bucky's jaw, warm skin on warm skin. He moved his hand to the nape of Bucky's neck, gripping the short hair there loosely. "You're worth more than that. Your life is worth more than that. If I have to personally sit on you for the next three days to prove that I will."  
\--  
"And you did have to sit on me. You put me in an arm bar and sat on my ass for half that next day."

Steve startled but Natasha just pressed her hand on his chest in a calming gesture.

James was lounging in the doorway, the metal adapter in his shoulder pressed against the jamb. "I remember that."

Natasha gestured for him to join them on the bed, and he wobbled over. He didn't lie down, but instead sat with his hip and thigh pressed down Natasha's flank, hand smoothing over the hairs on his leg.

"I kept you there, though. I kept you alive. And then I just had Farnsworth take your sight so you couldn't sneak off."

"I was fuckin' pissed at you. It took me five hours to recalibrate my sight after I got it back from that limey." The crooked, broken smile that Steve remembered from after Zola hung itself on James' face, and for a moment, Steve thought, _this is going to be alright_. Then, like a blind flicked closed the expression was gone, and in its place was one that was blank and dark.

Natasha rolled over on James, trapping his leg under her side and doing something lithe to straddle his knees. She stroked his face tenderly, murmuring in Russian. His eyes widened, not shocked, but scared, and she coaxed him to lie back. She stacked them neatly side by side, shoulders pressing together. She kissed first James, and then Steve on their foreheads, hand lingering on their cheeks, before rising and turning off the lights. Steve was surprised to find himself exhausted, and the steady breathing of his oldest friend next to him lulled him to sleep.  
\--  
James’ stirrings woke Steve and he lay still, pinpointing James’ location for a moment. They’d migrated into a familiar back-to-back position, shoulder blades and buttocks pressed together in a line of warmth.

“I gotta tell ya’; losing an arm has to be the best thing ever for sleeping on your side.”

Steve turned in tandem with James and was met with a grin over his shoulder which matched his own. “Fuck do I miss having a pair of thumbs. You think Stark can hurry up with my replacement?”

Steve stilled and turned fully so he could meet James’ eyes. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea yet. Natasha says you probably have enough going on in your head without trying to integrate new cybernetics.”

“Natasha? She a new women’s core?”

Steve only had a moment to look troubled before James went into convulsions. “JARVIS - medical emergency override. Get Medical in here NOW.” Steve rolled on top of James, straddling his hips and holding his arm steady. Natasha, Czarnecki and Stark rushed in a moment later, turning him to his side, scanning, shouting, and trying to soothe.

He came out of it quickly with a shot of something from Doctor Czarnecki and lay back on the bed, panting.

“I’m going to tear your throat out, Stark,” was the first thing he said upon regaining some semblance of consciousness.

“You wouldn’t be the first, or the best to try,” Tony sneered, shoving an implement in his jeans pocket. “If you weren’t fucked up in the head, though, you might not wake up to make the attempt.”

Steve had grown quiescent with regards to Stark’s raging personality disorders but was suddenly alert to everything he’d benched as insignificant. James and Stark were having an eyeball-off, both with a mad gleam.

“Enough,” Steve growled. James laughed. Stark snapped to awareness and frowned. “Tony - figure out what’s wrong with him with Doctor Czarnecki. Natasha, can you stay with him?”  
\--  
Clint looked through the files from SHIELD for the fourth time, hoping something useful would fall out of them. If he hadn’t been him and known he was most definitely not responsible for it, even he would have blamed himself for the campaign finance officer’s attack.

The arrow wasn’t his style, but few people besides his SHIELD quartermaster, Tony Stark and himself would know that. The weighting of the arrow suggested a lighter draw than his own, but that was hardly surprising. Given the skill the shot implied and the distance, it was someone of olympic class skill. Given that fact and the lighter draw strength it was likely a woman.

It wasn’t a kill shot. Fury had called it a miss, but the positioning of the arrow was too precise. If the shooter had been sloppy or simply less skilled than she was, it was much more likely that she would have missed the center of mass or head and gone into the stomach or hip or simply shot through the wall to either side of the target. She had been aiming to wound and given the placement of the shot, there was a personal element to it all. That man would likely never walk without a cane and that was provided they could reattach the ligaments she had severed and tack enough cartilage back in place.

 _The why will get you to the who_. It was like Coulson was sitting right next to him, coaching through the investigative process. SHIELD had compiled a massive list of witnesses, suspects, and people in the area at the time. They’d scoured CCTV footage (originally hoping to expunge evidence of their rogue operative) and had tentative ID’s on a sixty seven people using facial recognition software.

“JARVIS, can I borrow you?” Clint asked, glancing around his quarters.

“Of course, Sir. How may I be of service?”

“Can you group these suspects? Like, age, residence, place of business? If they have any link to either side of the campaign, too. And women only.”

“Of couse, Sir. I’m equiped with the most advanced heuristics techniques in modern statistical practice.” Profiles grouped themselves in several different ways with relevant statistics. Simply by removing the men it cut down the list significantly; not many women of any age were frequenting New York’s shadier city streets that long after dark.

Clint stared at the groupings. The shot spoke of passion and precision. The equipment spoke of means. “Okay, lets do this by age - nobody over say, 45, and no incomes under 100k.” The dual income and age filters brought the group down even further. Most of the wealthier women there donating to the campaign were older. “Remove staffers to the campaign and get me full profiles on all those remaining.”  
\--  
James’ progress was slow and filled with hiccups. Natasha was there for him as much as possible, murmuring in Slovakian when he was disturbed in his sleep and talking about anything he wanted when he was awake. Half the time he wasn’t sure what was real. They would sit with their foreheads almost touching, sharing breath and playing games of true/not true for hours.

Steve tried not to envy the warm way they were together. He resented the way Slavic consonants flowed like water off his friend’s tongue, and he got angry when James would tense at his entering a room.

The worst part of it was the feedback loop of pain between them when that happened. He tried to hide it, but Bucky always had been able to read him like a psychic. James would see his hurt and a flicker of resentment and burning anger would flash across his own features, followed by regret and shame.

“I don’t mean to— would you just come here you big lug?” James asked, sounding the most like Bucky that he had all week. Steve sat to James’ right, a little stiff and not quite touching. “I saw a lot of you while I was on vacation,” James said almost conversationally, except for a slight tremor. He had taken to euphemistically calling his time in the Red Room his vacation.

“Yeah?” Steve had gotten used to tangential and sometimes nonsensical things coming out of James’ mouth. Czarnecki had suggested he let such comments play out as they were James processing his change in circumstances. Talking it out often led back to why James had brought it up in the first place.

“Yeah,” James confirmed, licking his lips. “Almost every time they brought me back up you were lurking somewhere like my own little guardian angel. Only you never did anything to help. You just watched while they strapped me down and burned out the parts of me that made me Bucky Barnes and filled me to the brim with killer. I mean, yeah, I killed my share during wartime. The Commandos did their fucking part. But it wasn’t like that.” Jame shuddered. “You were always somewhere watching and you never raised a finger. Like you thought I deserved all of it.”

“Buck— James, that wasn’t—”

“I know it wasn’t you! Goddamn it, I knew. I knew because I don’t even _know_ how many times I tried to kill you. How many times I tried to touch you and you just weren’t there.” James’ hand balled into a fist. “So now I see you and I’m still not sure if this is a dream or not. I still think maybe this is just a crock my frozen brain cells put together to make me feel alright for a while.”

“James,” Steve said brokenly, “I’m here now. If I coulda been there then you know nothing would have kept me back. But I’m here now.”

“Are you?” The anger in his voice was as unexpected as the blow which immediately followed the words. The punch fell hard on Steve’s cheekbone, splitting the skin and startling Steve backwards hard enough to knock over the couch.

“FUCK!”

“Bucky,” Steve groaned.

“Fuck,” James reiterated, trying to roll free and only becoming more tangled in a throw and Steve’s limbs. “I think your face broke my hand.”

“Yeah?” Steve asked, wrapping his arms around James to pull him into an embrace. James let himself be moved, quiescent when Steve took his head under his chin. “I’m here now, Bucky. I’m not leaving you again.” Steve kissed the crown of his head and hugged him closer.

James overlaid his arm over Steve’s, his hand already purpling with bruising over cracked metatarsals. “Ya sure about that?”

“Yeah, Bucky, I’m sure.”

Steve had been hesitant about touching the sometimes prickly and still standoffish James before that moment. In the time before the war, physical affection had passed easily between them. If Bucky had been in his right mind and sound body, Steve would have grabbed a hold of his friend and not let him go for days. The simple comfort of the physical presence of the other man - the smell of his hair and skin and the feeling of the ebb and flow of his breath brough Steve peace.

“I missed you,” Steve told James’ hair. “I missed you every day and I kept telling myself maybe tomorrow it would be easier or it wouldn’t hurt so much when you weren’t there but I was lying. I’ve woken up each morning since we got you back just _stupid_ with how lucky I am. That you lived. That I made it. That we’re both here now.”

“Not all of me made it back, Cap,” James said with a rueful chuckle. “Not all of me that got back is worth the trouble.” James twisted in his grasp until they were nearly nose to nose.

“Bucky, I—”

“No. I’ve done some terrible things,” James paused making sure he had Steve’s attention, “I did things we killed Nazi scum over, and I don’t know how I am ever going to fucking sleep the night through.”

“That wasn’t you.”

“Don’t you fucking tell me what was and wasn’t me. I was fucking there, _Steve_. I know what it felt like and I know I didn’t give a fuck about—” he broke off. He took a huge, wheezing breath. “There’s some shit _nobody_ can forgive.”

“James Buchanan Barnes; I know you. You are a good man.” James began to protest, “and yeah, you may have done some things that walked the line back then but you never, _never_ crossed it. You were always a credit to our unit and I will never be ashamed to call you my friend. Whatever might have happened to you, it wasn’t your fault and you’re not responsible for it. You’re back home with me and that’s all that—”

James cut him off with a rough kiss. It was aggressive and angry and spoke of pain and confusion and a tentative reaching call for help. James tangled his fingers in Steve’s hair and winced when the movement jostled his broken hand. Steve disengaged from James gently, the mauve and purple bruise on his cheek giving him a rakish air.

“This... We shouldn’t do this now. Not when you’re not sure what’s real and whether I’m a hallucination or not.”

“No, we should 100% do this now,” James protested, wincing even as he reached for Steve. “When we do this I know you’re here and maybe I can believe the rest of what you said.”

“This isn’t right,” Steve replied flatly.

“That wasn’t a ‘no never’ though, right? We can maybe do this when I’m a bit more sane?”

Steve snorted a chuckle. “Sure thing. If you want to, then, we can give it a shot.”  
\--  
“Sir, I have her.”

“Her?” Fury raised an eyebrow disapprovingly.

“Yeah. Katherine Bishop.”

Fury frowned. “That name is familiar.”

“Derek Bishop is her father. He’s run a lot of the negative media campaigns about SHIELD action during the Battle of New York. He has suspected mafia ties and has dodged fraud charges not once, not twice, but three times. Katherine was the victim listed on a sexual assault investigation two years ago and since then has kept her head down at a prestigious private academy. There she’s got decent grades and was in training for trials at the 2012 olympics in archery until four months out. She hasn’t been frequenting any of her family’s properties regularly in the last three months.”

“Okay, girl can shoot. Why do you think it’s her?”

“Nobody else at this event was physically capable of the shot. There must be a motive but I’m not sure of it yet. Can you get the geeks to work up possible links between Katherine and the finance guy?”

“Consider it done. We can’t bring her in, though.”

“She shot a man.”

“She’s a minor and we can’t deal with the legal and media fallout from this when the shit hits the fan. Her father owns one of the top four publishing magnates in the city and you can be damned sure he will leverage that power when we detain his under age daughter. We need to understand why this happened.”

“Acknowledged, Sir. I’ll keep you informed.”

“And Barton? Don’t go talk to her. We have enough trouble on our hands without you soliciting a minor.”

“Soliciting— Sir that doesn’t seem—”

“Barton,” the director replied sharply, “you have your orders.”  
\--  
Natasha dragged Steve off on a run. They both had an excess of anxious energy and the repetitive physical exercise was good for them. "Clint seems as though he's been avoiding us," Steve commented.

"Yes." It was an affirmation but a slight tonal lift at the end of the word invited him to continue his line of inquiry.

"Why? Did we do something?"

Natasha looked at him as though he was infinitely stupid, but she was still quite fond of him. They continued pounding the pavement for another few blocks before Natasha spoke. "The reappearance of the Winter Soldier has brought up a plethora of issues for Clint. I believe he is trying to keep his distance so as to not negatively impact our interactions with James."

Steve frowned and and rumbled a thoughtful noise deep in his chest. Steve would admit to a somewhat gilded fantasy of Bucky and Clint getting on like long lost brothers. Many of the qualities that Steve had respected and loved in Bucky he had been drawn to in Clint; fierce loyalty, a somewhat puerile, wicked sense of humor, ruthless competence and a single minded commitment. Natasha was silent while he thought it through.

"What kind of issues?" He felt himself shifting into command mode as he asked the question. Natasha gave him a measuring look. She was reticent to share personal details for any reasons. With Clint she tended to hold those details especially close.

"James' deprogramming has no doubt brought up unpleasant memories for him. The Winter Soldier's shooting record is also a sore point."

"His— what?" Steve frowned in confusion.

"The Winter Soldier is the only person who could potentially rival Clint's claim as the World's Greatest Marksman. The Soldier's hand to hand prowess is on par with my own and superior to Clint’s. He appears to benefit in longevity and resilience similar to my own as a side effect of Schmidt's experiments. That, combined with his bionic enhancements put his strength on par with many meta-humans. Clint will be concerned with his position within the Initiative if James is successfully rehabilitated."

"That's insane. I would never— he will _always_ have a place on this team."

Natasha's eyelashes dipped down in a wordless demure. Steve stopped so he could face Natasha fully. "Bucky may never be the man I knew. He may never be free of the Winter Soldier." Steve sighed. "I haven't accepted that yet but I _have_ realized it's a possibility." Steve frowned, pained and unable to express his feelings well. "I would never _kick Clint to the curb_ ," Steve winced as though saying the words hurt him, "even if we did end up with another sniper on the team. No matter who that was."

Natasha nodded at his words, but she was giving him a dry look as though she thought it was adorable that Steve believed what he was saying. "Most of Clint's identity and self worth is tied up in his marksmanship. If he believes he is no longer the best, he will come up with an exit strategy."

"He is the best," Steve stated stubbornly. "What he does with a bow is... I've never seen anyone better."

"You've never seen Winter Soldier." It wasn't a reproof, but he couldn't refute the statement. He knew how Bucky had shot. He knew how Bucky fought. This older, worn, _broken_ version of his friend... He had no clue what that man was capable of.

"Was he? Better?" Steve asked quietly, feeling like a traitor even voicing the question.

"Was Winter Soldier a better assassin? Yes. Was he a better marksman - a better tactician? No. Not even close." Natasha allowed silence to settle between them while Steve ruminated.

"It doesn't matter what our opinions are, does it?" Natasha gave him an approving look as if to say he’d finally come to the right conclusion. "The only thing that will have an effect is what Clint thinks."

Natasha turned and began walking back towards home, as though she couldn't deal with this conversation while standing still. "Clint was considering retiring from field operations before the Battle of New York. He and Coulson had gone through the paperwork. The Tesseract facility was his first trial as a static operations manager."

"Jeeze." Steve rubbed his face and ran his fingers through his hair.

"He's understandably apprehensive about continuing down that path." Natasha's words were dry as bone and accompanied by a wry twist of her mouth. "The fact is that Clint is thirty-seven. He's worked for SHIELD for more than half his life. His body isn't going to stand up to this line of work for many more years. He will be convinced to retire, he will suffer a career-ending injury, or he will die." Natasha said the last in a tone so flat he could have leveled a pool table on it. Her complete lack of tells was a tell unto itself.

Steve reached an arm around her and hugged her in tightly against his side. They stuck together at sweaty patches, and it once more caused them to stop moving, but she pressed into him in a way that said it was what she needed.

"Clint's... thing... isn't about Bucky at all then," Steve said into her hair.

"No," Natasha agreed.  
\--  
Clint and Darcy were on BuckyWatch while Natasha forced Steve into some physical activity that didn’t involve forcibly restraining his best friend from hurting himself or others. Darcy was mostly keeping Clint company, lounging on the couch and flipping through magazines. James had been asleep the entire time. Clint checked him every twenty minutes, silent as a shadow, but aside from moving from one awkward sleep position to the next, there was no change.

James had been putting on weight rapidly and no longer looked as though a strong breeze would blow him over. Clint leaned into Darcy to get a kiss before standing for his 4:40 check. It was only by a preternatural sense developed from years of living with Natasha that he got his hands up in time to avoid a serious garrotting. Clint snapped his head back, catching James hard in the nose. Using the garrotte as leverage, Clint bent and flipped the other man over his back, catching his hand as he went over so he could flip and pin him. In a matter of seconds Clint had one of the super zip ties Tony had made for just this purpose securing James, ankle to wrist in an entirely uncomfortable position.

James hissed and growled like an animal, pulling on his restraints with all his might. Clint stood well away of the flailing limbs. “Calm. Down.” James twisted to glare at him. The glaring went on for a while. “I can untie you if you calm down,” Clint offered.

“You okay babe?” Darcy called through the open door.

“Just fine. Jamie here got a bit confused is all.”

“James,” he insisted, “not Jamie.” Clint only smiled in a way that had drove Nick Fury to drink. “You’re new.”

“Not really. You just haven’t been awake for any of my tender care yet. You’re not in the Red Room any longer, by the way. This isn’t a trick.”

“Yeah. That’s just what you’d say.”

“Yep,” Clint agreed easily. “You’ve never seen me before, though. That means I’m a whole new level of mindfuckery, you really have gone off the deep end, or I’m telling the truth.” Clint rummaged around in the laundry and threw one of Steve’s used shirts almost under his nose. “That seem real enough to you?”

James closed his eyes and inhaled. The frown of worry that had bunched his brow eased with each inhalation. He dropped his head onto the piece of clothing with a sigh. “I think you broke my nose.”

“Cry me a river. It’ll be better in a day or two. Feeling better?”

“Yeah.”

Darcy chose that moment to come check on both of them. “Holy crap! Did you truss him up and punch him in the face?” Clint looked at the scene they presented; him, lounging against the dresser, James tied with a purpling face, eyes watering from the blow with his cheek resting on dirty laundry.

“Not in that order,” Clint replied.

“Well hello beautiful,” James said with a toothy smile. “I don’t think there’s a word in the dictionary for how good you look. Hot damn.” Darcy blushed. She’d been lounging in panties and a tanktop and hadn’t really expected James to be awake. Now that it was she felt more than a bit indecent.

“Hey, that’s my girlfriend you’re hitting on. And kinda Natasha’s and Steve’s.”

“My apologies, miss,” James replied cheekily, glancing between Clint and Darcy. “Damn, welcome to the twenty-first century. Do girls keep stables of husbands now or is that just Steve putting himself in second billing as usual?”

Clint raised an eyebrow. Darcy blushed down her chest. “We’re kind of a unique setup,” she admitted. “I’m Darcy. That’s Clint.”

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’d shake, but,” James wriggled a bit.

The wriggling took on an abruptly alarming uncontrollability.

“Is he—” Darcy began asking.

“That’s a seizure. Help me get him on his side.” Darcy pushed and Clint pulled James over to his left side. Clint fumbled a notepad off the desk and shoved it between his jaws while Darcy called for help. With some vehemence, Clint wondered why this shit always went down on his watch.  
\--  
“I’m afraid you have reached the limits of my personality and advice programming.” JARVIS managed to sound regretful.

Steve froze in the entryway out of sight of the common area when he heard the AI speaking.

“Seriously, though. What the fuck am I supposed to do with myself? I’m no genius but I can read SHIELD stat sheets. The casualty rate of active assets approaches 100% at eighteen years of service. I’m not stupid enough to think I’m some kind of special snowflake, but if I quit I’m as good as dead anyway.”

JARVIS was silent for a long moment. Steve considered fleeing. He considered walking in as though he’d heard nothing. He stayed frozen. If Clint had wanted privacy he would have stayed in his room; Natasha was on guard with James and Darcy was pulling an overnighter at SHIELD headquarters. He had probably come to the common area looking for company, and, finding it deserted, engaged JARVIS. He felt like a terrible eavesdropping busybody doing it, but Clint’s behavior recently had him worried.

“I often advise Sir against actions which are statistically indistinguishable from suicide. Ultimately the choice to undertake or avoid those actions lies with Sir and his internalized value matrix. The decision of what his life is worth is Sir’s alone.”

“So we’re all going to die somehow - it’s just a matter of for what?”

“An apt paraphrase.” They were both silent for a while, interrupted only by the sound of Clint drinking from a bottle. “Might I make a suggestion?” JARVIS offered.

“Lay it on me.”

“You may be making inaccurate assumptions as to where the bulk of your value lies.”

“Oh?” Clint sounded dubious.

“Indeed. Though my understanding is admittedly limited, the practice of assassination is relatively straightforward and may be acquired by any individual of adequate physical and mental acumen. Your status as World’s Greatest Marksman was secured by equal parts that and the experience, fortitude and timing to take _and not take_ those shots. That wisdom is harder-earned than a simple physical skill.”

The elevator doors opened almost silently behind Steve and Tony rushed out. A pair of jewelers glasses were buried in the tangle nest of Tony’s hair and he had a pointed tool of some sort which it seemed he had forgotten to put down. Steve followed him into the room. Clint was mostly horizontal propped on some cushions on top of the liquor armoire. He glared at Tony, clutching a bottle of whiskey.

“What the hell are you guys doing to JARVIS?” Tony asked, waving his tool between Clint and Steve. Clint cast a suspicious look at Steve. “His computational efficiency is down to 0.01% of normal.”

“We were just shooting the shit,” Clint replied breezily.

“That does not explain why JARVIS was downloading every archived advice column which is publicly available from the last thirty years and performing multivariate principal components analysis on it? He wrote himself empathy subroutines. They are _literally cripplingly computationally intensive_. More people might have noticed but it’s after midnight and half the development staff is at the Futurists conference in Kyoto.”

“Sir, I took those factors into account during memory and processing allocation,” JARVIS protested.

“They were just talking,” Steve added, feeling defensive on Clint’s behalf. Clint rolled his eyes and took another drink from the bottle.

“Are you telling me your personal problems brought the most advanced AI _in the world_ and the largest privately owned supercomputing cluster to its knees?” Tony blustered.

Clint shrugged, knocking one of his pillows off his perch. “Go big or go home.” He met Tony’s disbelieving look with a completely blank and completely terrifying expression.

Tony spun around to head back to the elevator. “JARVIS - no more than 20% computing power allocated to conversation subroutines in the future. I thought we had this worked out after Pepper got you signed up for a Philosophy degree at DeVry. I never want to have to purge that much Nihilism from your code ever again.”

“If you will excuse me, it seems best if I tend to Sir’s needs at this point,” JARVIS told them, carrying on a conversation simultaneously with Tony.

Clint turned his blank look on Steve. “You were listening to all of that, weren’t you?” Clint’s voice was not significantly slurred in spite of the half-empty bottle he held to his chest like a beauty queen’s bouquet.

“I may have... Yes.” Steve hung his head feeling ashamed. He heaved a huge breath in and out, hoping it would calm him. “I’ve been worried about you.”

Clint twitched an eyebrow at him but otherwise didn’t react, eyes stuck staring at the neck of his bottle. “You and everyone else,” he said, sounding almost surprised by the admission. “When did what I do get to be anybody’s business but mine? I accepted I was going to die on the job a long time ago. There’s a mandatory SHIELD seminar on it after three years’ employment for chrissake. The things we do have to get done so don’t you fucking tell me I should retire.”

Steve approached the armoire. “Nobody would ever ask that you do that. _I_ would never ask that you do that. But the fact is, your undercover persona is pretty much blown. Maybe JARVIS was right - maybe your legacy should be more than just a pile of missions completed.”

“You’re talking about teaching.”

“I’m talking about maybe being a handler like Coulson was. I’m talking about taking on a protegee or starting a training program. Don’t give up on the Avengers, but maybe... There’s other people who can take on the SHIELD work.”

“I’m a terrible teacher,” Clint stated. He moved to take another slug from his bottle but dropped it down once more in disgust. “What am I going to do?” he asked wearily with the air of someone who had not stopped asking himself that question for hours if not days and weeks.

“You’re asking the wrong guy, buddy. You have a decade of experience on me and my bright ideas have included joining the army during wartime, participating in dangerous experimental drug treatments and crashing a Nazi plane into the ocean.”

Clint began giggling, which turned to laughter with a hysterical edge. Steve reached over the top of the armoire and dragged Clint closer so they could engage in a sort of awkward sideways hug. Clint’s laughter turned into hysterical tears intermixed with giggles which only made the sobs sound sadder. “I don’t want to die,” he almost whispered, “but I can’t be useless.” The sentiment broke Steve’s heart. It was so close to how he had felt, going through basic. He remembered the feeling that if he could just get out on the front line and jump on a grenade or take a bullet for someone who would really matter... The feeling that he had to do get out and do his part, even if it led to his own destruction was still keen within him.

Steve petted Clint’s hair, rhythmic strokes from crown to the nape of his neck while his tears ran out. “Why is everyone all of a sudden telling me it’s not okay to die?”

“Maybe because the fakers in your life before now didn’t realize how important and valuable you were.”

Clint huffed a wet little snort. “No, I think they knew their golden goose when they got ahold of him.”

“Clint,” Steve growled, wrestling his friend’s head around until they were nose to nose, “this is the last time I’m going to say this so I suggest you listen carefully.” Clint’s eyes were glassy, amplifying the wash of blues, greens and browns through his irises. He hardly seemed able to focus on Steve, so caught up in memories. “You are more than your skills and abilities. You mean more to Darcy than that, and you mean more to Natasha and I, and we need you to start remembering that. We’ll figure this out.”  
\--  
“Dr. Ross and I have an idea what’s going wrong with his brains.”

Thor had strongly suggested that Steve go mope somewhere else, or preferably, get some rest. He had thought about a nap but instead had gone to pester Tony. The slippage in James’ faculties was alarming and confusing, and though Tony sounded grim when he announced they had an idea, it was more than they’d had before. “That’s good to hear.” He poured himself a cup of Tony’s motor-oil style coffee and sat.

“The neural implant is searching for something to network with. Since it’s getting nothing it’s been sending out stronger and stronger signals. The energy output is causing mini-shorts in his brain. Why it’s affecting his memory more than his motor function is anybody’s guess. We think that’s the basis for the seizures.”

“Do you have a solution?” Steve asked. Tony rarely brought up a problem within his realm of expertise without a commensurate solution.

“Surprisingly enough, yes. Slap an arm back on him. That is, if you think he’s ready. I might be able to do some kind of short-term block to fool the motor implant but it might just cause more problems.”

Steve thought of the broken man they had carried into the Tower, and the person that was almost his old friend who stalked the halls now. He thought of watching James and Natasha stretch and fight. He thought of eating pancakes together, and seeing the devastated look James would sometimes get after Dr. Czarnecki left. He thought about the times over the weeks they had been forced to fight James into restraints and fetch him from the air ducts. He thought about the fact that James hadn’t fallen into his terrifying china doll version of a mental reboot in over a week.

“I think he’ll be okay. If it will help the recovery I’m willing to risk it,” Steve said.  
\--  
"Do I want to know why you have this thing in your garage?" James asked jokingly, popping up on the procedure chair.

"Pepper loves looking into my darling eyes during sex and I’m too lazy to prop myself up," Tony retorted, smiling back all teeth.

Steve blushed. He was shuffling around not feeling as though he should be there.

"Since you're not going to go all red menace on us I souped up you tech. Actually, I threw out your tech and rebuilt it. How attached were you to that red star on the shoulder? I can put it on the new one but I think I can do better, stylistically. I also have some new polymer paint option that pulls off a pretty convincing flesh tone if that’s what you’re into."

"Stark," James cut him off, "If it's got five fingers just hook me up. Steve owes me a rematch with a cat's cradle and I've been waiting on that for seventy years already."

"Right. So." Tony clapped his hands together. Dummy trundled up pulling a cart with a disembodied left arm on it. "Depending on your neural integration I've increased the surface and pressure sensitivity by eight to twenty two fold. I changed the makeup on the fingertips᠇"

"Just put it on."

"It'll probably feel like-"

"Just do it, Stark." Almost before James had finished speaking, Tony was wrist deep in circuitry attaching the arm, working with his robots to complete a dozen connections. The prosthetic arm began twitching spasmodically.

Hot and cold, pain and numbness and a twisting, helpless agony sheeted up and down the arm which was, and was not, his. It felt like a limb waking; pain accompanying the transformation of dead meat to vital, mobile flesh.

"I reactivated your wireless transceivers. They're downloading my software update and re-mapping nerve inputs."

James tested the fingers first, touching each fingertip to thumb in turn. He clenched his fist and flexed the palm wide. He tested the range of motion on each joint under Tony's watchful gaze.

"This is good work, Stark."

Tony opened his mouth as though to argue and then shut it. "Of course it is," he replied almost snappishly. "Go. Test it out. JARVIS is doing real time fine tuning on your software and you need to give the microvillae something to calibrate on."

James rubbed his palms together. The metal of the left felt as smooth as it ever had, but when he went to pinch his thumb and forefinger around the meat of his right it felt as though the metal almost stuck to his skin.

"That's really weird."

"If you ever have to pick up something smaller than a pen it'll be useful. They compress like the first layer of skin cells on a real hand and have enough grip to stick with a few grams of force to mimic the capillary pull of a fingerprint."

"What?" Steve asked.

Tony held up his palm, rubbed the thumb against the middle finger, and pressed his middle finger down on a rough hole-punch dot on his desktop, waggling it at Steve when it stuck to his finger.

"Oh."

James did the same and picked up a second dot of paper, looking delighted. "That's a reason to not put a glove on if I ever had one." He slapped Tony on the shoulder with enthusiasm. "Let's go do some stuff that requires two arms," James said to Steve, standing.  
\--  
Steve found James with the help of JARVIS, on the shooting range. He and Clint were lying next to one another with identical rifles and earplugs in, shooting at almost comically small targets.

“Is this approved by Dr. Czarnecki?” Steve asked feeling like a spoilsport even as he brought it up.

“Probably not,” Clint said with a grin, “but this joker wouldn’t shut it about what a good shot he was so we had to come up for some target shooting.”

“And?” Steve asked.

“He’s good,” Clint replied with a rueful smile.

“Told ya,” James added, the crooked, cocky grin Steve remembered from his youth back on his friend’s face.

“Is it such a good idea to give him a gun?” Steve asked Clint in an undertone.

Clint shrugged. “You guys put an arm back on him. With that thing he could crush my windpipe like jello, so...”

“Point,” Steve conceded. “I’ll just leave you two to...”

James fired his last round and took out the clip, reloading it from a box of ammunition sitting between them. The rhythmic clicks were almost meditative. Clint joined him, pressing long rifle rounds in with strong fingers. They slotted the clips in and settled back into position. “I bet I can make an animal,” Clint challenged.

“You’re on, my friend.” The distances they could shoot within the Tower were trivial to them both. For challenge they had begun shooting out little figures into their targets. It was like pictionary with bullets from 300 meters. Clint spared glances at James between shots. He was still gaunt but nearly back to what Clint would call fighting weight. If he had to guess he would put James around his own age, though he knew he was much older. Frown lines and scars criss crossed his forehead and weather-worn crows feet from squinting mirrored his own.

Since the return of a prosthetic he seemed much more stable. Tony wrote it off as the neural implant no longer interfering with his brain chemistry but Clint felt like it was probably more. The helpless feeling that came with being taken apart like that could take a toll on the mind, and the simple recovery of the ability to eat with a fork and knife could do wonders for a person. The idea that someone might take his place over, at SHIELD or on the team, was unsettling. The thought that it was this man in particular was not. It didn’t take half a brain or an ounce of interpersonal skill to recognize the care and tenderness Natasha and Steve felt whenever he was nearby. He also didn’t need to see that to know they trusted him in combat and had done so for years before Clint knew either of them. If he had to be put out to pasture, he was glad it was for someone like that.

They reloaded once more and Clint put the finishing touches on his own artistic endeavour. When he had brought Natasha in they had gone through a very similar ebb and flow of lucid interaction and utter insanity. James was on an upswing, but Clint was prepared to duck and cover the moment he began sliding back down.

Clint caught James in a sidelong glance and quirked an eyebrow. “So did you and him...” Bucky said vaguely, turning back to his sight. “You and Steve seem chummy.”

“We’re close. He trusted me when he probably shouldn’t have.”

“Sounds like him.”

“He was having a hard time adjusting to the time change. We brought him in from the cold, I guess.” Clint didn’t need to say, “He means a lot to me.”

“Done,” James informed him with some satisfaction.

They called in the targets and traded them, turning them around and around trying to figure out what animal the other had been making. As snipers it was really difficult not to aim for the spot they had just plugged. Clint had found his sights wanting to wander towards the shot he had just made. Add that to a less than stellar artistic history and his was a bit of a hash. James’ wasn’t much better.

“Is it a bear?”

“Not really. Though yeah, from that side it does look like a bear.”

“Huh. Um.... a dog?

“Yeah!” James enthused. “I’m going to go with... cat.”

“Come on, I even did the ears.”

“Oh! Bunny! It’s a bunny!”  
\--  
Clint checked his gear a third time and looked at himself in the full length mirror. He had his urban kit on; a quiver and compact bow disguised within a large backpack, cargo pants, a t-shirt and tactical jacket, and combat boots. He looked like an ultra marathoner who had just jogged out of boot camp, but it was a fair sight better than looking like Hawkeye the Avenger out for an evening stalking session.

He’d looked over the analysis from the SHIELD geeks and he just couldn’t figure it out. The man she shot was an associate of her father. As a known fixer for campaigns he would have contacts with every publisher in the city in the event he needed to keep a scandal quiet. That was it, though. There was no history of interactions between the two. It didn’t look like any particularly large amount of blackmail was going on between him and Damian Bishop. There wasn’t anything linking them.

Most of it was trying to solve the mystery, but a small part of Clint wanted to meet the other marksman simply _because_ she was another marksman on his turf, and a damned good one. The sensible, Coulson-sounding part of himself kept trying to talk him out of going. Fury had explicitly, expressly ordered him not to do this. He really had no plan once encountering her. She was only just seventeen for chrissake.

Regardless, he resettled his gear for the tenth time, and set out to observe Katherine Bishop in her native habitat. Her native habitat turned out to be ridiculously upscale coffee shops, clubs which let her in in spite of her age, and an underground MMA gym. He shadowed her, watching her workout through a basement window. She was good. Not Natasha-class good, but for a teenager who hadn’t grown up in the life, she had potential. When she exited the gym Clint decided to make his move. Casually he pulled out his bow, snapped it into shape and lined up a shot. The arrow embedded in a gap between concrete sidewalk blocks, a thin white strip of fabric unfurling from the shaft when it stuck and quivered.

Her reaction was immediate, dropping into a low crouch and scanning for him. Her eyes locked on the bow and then him within seconds. She held her hands up and away from her body, meeting his eye. Clint snapped the bow back into its compact form and approached.

“What do you want?” she asked trying for harsh and only making it to angry and scared.

“Just here to talk,” Clint replied amiably.

“Then talk.”

“I needed to find out what you had against that finance guy that you shot the other night. Thing is, my boss thought it was me and it looks bad when I go rogue and shoot civilians.”

Katherine glared at him through narrowed eyes and tinted sunglasses. “It’s not really any of your business why I did it and it’s none of mine _what_ your bosses think you do on your off time.”

Clint was close enough to see the flare of fear in her nostrils and the flush to her palms. She was scared and ready for a fight. He wasn’t honestly expecting one. When mocked by Natasha, later, that was his only defense. In a swift movement she closed distance and kneed him in the groin with all the force an almost fully grown woman who matched him for height could muster. She followed that up with a knee to his nose when he doubled up, and took off running before the blinding pain in his privates or his face could recede. “Fuck,” Clint managed to cough out. _Taken down by self defense 101_ he thought wryly to himself.

He caught up with her the next day at the hipstery coffee joint she seemed to prefer. They sold only coffee, coffee with milk or iced coffee. Clint ordered a plain coffee from the tall, brooding, bearded barista. He tried to stare down the many-armed wooden effigy behind the counter while his coffee was made with a lot more care than he planned to use while drinking. “I’m Clint,” he called out her name before approaching. Her eyes flicked up to him, assessing his cup of coffee and lack of armament.

“Call me Kate. My pastor is the only one who still calls me Katherine.” Her jaw was set in a mullish tilt and she looked as though she wouldn’t mind kneeing him again.

“Kate. It suits you.” Clint stood beside the open chair at her table for a moment. “May I join you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “If you try anything you’re going to be limping out of here with one less nut,” she told him suspiciously.

“Duly noted,” he replied, seating himself. It was damned good coffee. “I’m just here to talk. Like I was just there to talk last night.”

“Great way to show it, Hawk Dude - shooting at a woman coming out of her kickboxing class.”

Clint shrugged, “I’ve never been accused of having an excess of interpersonal skills.”

They sat in silence, eyeballing one another.

“You said you were here to talk,” she said finally, glaring pointedly at him.

“You’re quite a shot.”

The barest hint of a smirk flashed across her face. “Yes I am.”

“Why are you shooting some stuffed shirt instead of shooting for medals in London? Girl from a good family like you I don’t imagine there would be any obstacles to making that happen.”

She snorted delicately. “That’s precious.”

“What?”

“Good family like mine. You’re telling me that for all your shadow government resources you can’t see the scum my father is? Talk to me like an adult or go fuck yourself.”

“Huh?” Clint was honestly taken aback. If her disdain for her father was genuine - and Clint was well versed in what genuine hatred for close family looked like - it had somehow gone undetected by the public. Outwardly Katherine Bishop was known to be a somewhat bratty, well to do socialite, doted upon by her mother and spoiled by her father. “I mean, yeah, but this isn’t really about him, I don’t think.”

“That’s where you’re wrong Clint,” she said, biting off her ‘t’. “Daddy’s been held up on charges but nothing’s ever stuck; he’s got dirt on everyone in this city worth their haircut.” She chewed on her lip thoughtfully. Kate wore large tinted sunglasses which made it even more difficult to read her thoughts. “What’s this information worth to you?”

“I can get you out of assault charges.”

She waved her hand dismissively, “Daddy dearest would take care of that anyway, _if_ they could pin it on me.”

Clint frowned. “Why don’t we talk about what you’d want for that information.”

“A SHIELD safe house,” she replied quickly enough that he knew she had to have had the answer ready.

“A specific one, or—”

“I don’t care, so long as nobody at Bishop Publishing can find it.”

“So you actually want it for safe housery.”

“Yeah - you think I want it to root out your operatives and kill them?” Clint’s face obviously conveyed that he had at least considered that. “Well screw you very much.”

“Well I don’t now!” he protested.

“That fixer isn’t just an old chum of my dad’s - my dad has him on payroll to scrub any mafia or black market or whatever might come up in relation to _him_.” She glanced down at her coffee cup, lined with rings of richly brown coffee dregs marking her sips. “Dad was into some shit I just couldn’t conscience. I was going to turn in evidence to the feds and that slime found out about it. He hired someone to attack me in the park. My mom put me in a private hospital and bam, that took care of me.” Events slotted into place and it suddenly became clear to Clint why she felt like she’d want access to a safe house. Kate was almost shaking she was so angry. “I got my life back on track a few months later but... the evidence was already gone and I could be written off as that girl that got thrown in the institution.”

Silence vibrated between them for a long moment. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” Clint said finally.

“Yeah. Well basically that’s why I shot him. I wanted him to feel as vulnerable as I did. I wanted him to know he could never outrun me if I came for him, and I wanted him to know I could have taken his life just as easily.”

“I think that message got through loud and clear.”

“Yeah,” she agreed.

Clint felt a stab of panic when the word came out just a bit watery. He was terrible at dealing with people crying. He took a deep breath. “So... I can’t give you a SHIELD safe house.”

“What?” Kate bit out.

“But I can offer you a place at Stark Tower.” He couldn’t really, not actually, but he knew for a fact there were rooms on his floor that weren’t being used and that Tony would never notice. “It’s not low profile but there isn’t better security anywhere. And we have a killer shooting gallery.”

She tilted her glasses down to the tip of her nose, and for the first time he saw the dark circles and the bleary, bloodshot cast to her eyes and he felt something inside him break. He’d never tracked her back to where she slept at night. It suddenly seemed likely that it was a different friend’s house, or crashing on the spare floor of a friend of someone she didn’t know very well. She wasn’t a street kid - she was a rich little brat - but something in him was tugged on by something in her. “Come on back to the Tower. We can work out the details in a bit. You can keep to our original deal, even if it might end with Tony calling me one-nut.”

“More like half-sack,” she replied. She shook her head and came to a decision. “Yeah, okay.”  
\--  
“Clint, you can not just bring some random underage girl back here,” Darcy hissed.

“Says the almost jailbait,” Clint replied.

“There is a _huge_ difference between twenty five and seventeen and you know it. What is she doing here? You can’t just pick up a girl to live here because she shares a hobby.”

“I picked her up because she’s not in a safe place and she’s smart and nobody is taking care of her—”

“Oh my God you did not just give me a foster parent speech. Tell me you didn’t sign adoption papers.”  
\--  
Clint was in SHIELD’s doghouse. In every way he could think of that an asset could be in the doghouse, he was in the doghouse. “I give you _one_ assignment and you end up kidnapping a minor. What the actual fuck, Barton? Are you trying to aggravate my ulcer? Is my pain enjoyable to you?”

“No Sir.” Clint stood stiffly at attention enduring the professional reaming he was getting from Fury. He was getting to what Coulson used to call his boiling point where good sense was overridden by anger and an ingrained distaste for authority.

“Then explain to me how I am going to spin this. Because right now I’ve got fuckall besides you lost your fucking mind again.”

“She’s in protective custody, Sir. Voluntary protective custody.”

“That girl is _underage_. She can’t volunteer to go to the art museum without her parent’s say so, let alone be spirited off into protective custody.”

“I have reason to believe her father was complicit in perpetrating a sexual assault on her with reasonable suspicion that she is still in physical danger.”

Fury frowned and settled onto his back leg thoughtfully. “Huh. That changes things.” Clint nodded. “Does she have any evidence?” Clint glared at Fury. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. It just makes the emancipation paperwork easier.” Clint relaxed just a bit. “Tell you what; you take her through the paperwork and get approval from Stark and all’s forgiven. I take it you remember the forms?”

“Yessir.”

Clint let out a sigh of relief as he left the Director’s office. That was pretty much as well as he had hoped it possibly could be. He had been on the other side of emancipation paperwork the last time he had filled it out. Coulson had been there, walking him through it and helping translate the legalese. Kate practically deflated with relief when he told her the news. They filled out everything then and there with the help of one of Pepper’s lawyers and sent it off.

More quietly Clint filled out his incident reports related to Kate along with threat and employment suitability assessment profiles to SHIELD. He may have been a bit sloppy with them but he was in no way prepared for the response he received.

 _Age_ nt Coulson <pcoulson@shield.gov>  
 _to Hawkeye <cbarton@shield.gov>_  
 **Bishop Paperwork**  
You should be ashamed: you told me if I ever died in the line of duty you would carry on without me. This incident report is a disgrace. I expect you both in my office for a debrief by 1000 hours so we can do this right.  
PC

Clint’s mouth went dry at the familiar email address.

 _Hawkeye <cbarton@shield.gov>_  
 _to Agent Coulson <pcoulson@shield.gov>_  
 **Re: Bishop Paperwork**  
If this is a practical joke, I will leverage every asset I have at my disposal to end you.  
CB

The response came quickly.

 _Agent Coulson <pcoulson@shield.gov>_  
 _to Hawkeye <cbarton@shield.gov>_  
 **Re: Re: Bishop Paperwork**  
No joke.  
PC

“JARVIS - I need you to authenticate these emails and call the team together.” Clint braced his hands on his desk, small muscles in his forearms trembling in a way they never did during combat. JARVIS gave him a moment before responding.

“As you wish, Sir.”  
\--  
Clint couldn’t wait until the morning. He broke into Phil’s apartment that night, only to find it as desolate and undisturbed as when he had done the same thing following the Battle of New York. The stale scent of almost new carpets pervaded the space making it feel cold in spite of the temperature controls. Phil wouldn’t have played him like that; he felt certain. That only left even more perplexing possibilities.

The entire team with the exception of Steve showed up at Phil’s office, along with Darcy. Kate stood off to the side trying to look bored but mostly looking anxious in a borrowed hoodie mocked up to look like Clint’s armor. They clumped uncomfortably about Phil’s office door waiting for someone to start. “Babies,” Natasha said to them all, glaring especially at Clint.

“Fine. It’s my meeting anyway.” He rapped a quick knock and went in before nerve deserted him. Coulson was at his desk with his suit jacket draped over his left shoulder, that arm in a sling.

Clint stumbled to a stop creating a traffic jam behind him as everyone else tried to rush the doorway. “Sir,” Clint managed finally.

“Barton,” Coulson replied, a long look passing between them.

“Looking good for a dead man,” Tony said, breaking the moment. “I mean, I knew Fury was a fucking asshole but even for him this is beyond the pale.”

Coulson frowned thoughtfully, “I’m sure this isn’t the first time he’d had someone fraudulently declared dead. In his defense, I was flash frozen for almost six months. At the time I’m sure they didn’t think I would make it back.”

“Regardless,” Natasha said, “there will be words with the director.”

“I’m sure he’s expecting them.”

“We will talk later.” With no other words, Natasha turned on her heel and walked out.

“You’re okay? Not being indefinitely detained or anything?” Tony asked suspiciously, eyes a little bit moist.

“I assure you I’m here on my own recognizance. Now I believe Ms. Bishop, Barton, and I have a meeting?”

Darcy rushed forwards to wrap her arms around Coulson and kiss his temple. He winced but smiled when she pulled away. Bruce and Kate awkwardly shifted in the corner. “What the fuck is going on?” Kate whispered to Bruce. “They’re acting like he came back from the dead.”

“Uh...” Bruce managed, “he kind of did. I went to his funeral. I think Clint has his flag.”

Kate shoved her hands deeper into the belly pockets in the hoodie. “Intense.”

“It seems like that kind of thing is getting to be par. They did tell you about the ex-soviet assassin who was actually Steve’s best friend from before World War II that’s living down the hall from you, right?”

“ _What_?”

Tony, Bruce, and Darcy cleared out for the meeting. Clint flopped in his favorite lounging position in the guest chair while Kate sat stiffly on the couch that was mostly there to give Coulson a place to sleep. A detached portion of his brain told Clint that he was probably in shock, but the rest of him seemed to be intent on carrying on as though everything was normal. Coulson took meticulous notes one-handed, prompted them when they stalled and asked neutral questions. It felt so much like old times that it hurt.

“I saw that you’d removed yourself from consideration for static operations management in the future. Have you thought at all about what you’d like to do in lieu of that?”

“I was going to request a return to field operations,” Clint replied with a stubborn tilt to his mouth.

Coulson raised an eyebrow and hmm’ed. “Well, before you do that, I’d suggest you take a look at one of Director Fury’s project files. It’s under ‘Untouchables’.”  
\--  
“I couldn’t help but notice my Tower has a new resident. How did this happen?” Tony asked, looking pointedly at Kate. Kate stared back with what could only be described as a ‘bitch please’ look. “Am I not in charge of who lives in my house any longer? Is that what my life has come to - locked in the attic while my super family takes shameful advantage of my estate?”

Steve eyed the young woman in question. She had borrowed some of Darcy’s clothes which were too big in places and too short in others, but she looked considerably more human after a full night’s sleep and a superhero-sized breakfast. “Shouldn’t you be home with your—” Steve cut himself off when he noticed the saw-across-the-neck motions Tony was making behind her back.

“Did you know Fury keeps tabs on about thirty underage metahumans and vigilantes in the northeast alone?” Clint asked seemingly as a non-sequitor.

“That sounds like Director McCreep.”

Steve frowned disapprovingly. “SHIELD has no right to go interfering with children. They should be in school, not asked to risk their lives for a shadow organization.”

“That’s the thing. SHIELD isn’t doing a damned thing about them. They’re just on threat-watch waiting for them to turn rotten or get killed.”

“You can’t seriously expect Fury to become Child Protective Services for the super set,” Tony protested. “These kids are _kids_.”

“Most of them are less than 20 months from their eighteenth birthdays. Out of the 22 that are, five are living on the street - their file even has the fucking bridge one of them is living under - one has potentially been captured by metahuman traffickers, one is being actively hunted by the NYPD as a vigilante, three have been flagged as in danger of being recruited to the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and two have already committed felonies under questionable circumstances.”

“What are you saying?” Steve asked.

“I’m saying that fine, we don’t want to drag kids into a war. But we don’t want to push them to the other side of one either. These are kids in possession of more power than any teenager should have to shoulder with little to no social or structural support. More than half of them aren’t on track to graduate high school. If we don’t want to be either finding their bodies in the sewers or put in a position of having to kill them in the next few years, we need to get on this and find somewhere they can train in safety and learn enough to make those important choices when they’re old enough.”

“You can’t say that giving these kids over to SHIELD would give them a more normal childhood.”

“It would give them a chance to live to see their twenties,” Clint said in a way that shut down the conversation for a beat. Kate was turning between the speakers like she was watching a terrifying tennis match.

“Don’t you think that’s being a little dramatic?” Steve asked.

“I know for a fact if Coulson hadn’t gotten assigned to my case and brought me in when he did I’d be dead or in supermax prison. I was seventeen and he bent a whole mess of rules to get me assigned as an asset and I’ve never been so grateful for anything in my life.” Clint flashed back to the cold nights on the run after his second escape from police custody. The police he probably could have handled dodging - it was before well-integrated statewide police databases had made it to the midwest - but add in the Swordsman out to reclaim or silence his protegee and Clint had been days or weeks away from hypothermia or a katana through the chest.

The draw of a hot shower and a meal he didn’t have to steal was as strong as the offer for a chance to do something worthwhile for the world. If he could extend the same offer to similarly destitute children, he would.  
\--  
Steve sat heavily on Natasha’s couch, dropping his head into his hands. One of the reasons he had become an Avenger was to make the world safer - to make it so kids didn’t _have_ to fight. The world he had woken into was such a mottled grey minefield of ambiguous intentions and bad and worse options. The couch dipped down next to him as Natasha sat. She brushed his hair back in a tender gesture. She was sitting with one knee tucked under her with dancer-straight posture.

She pinned him with a solemn look. “Clint wasn’t given a lot of choice in life, or a lot of breaks. It might not seem right to you, but to him giving these kids a shot in this life... it might kill them, but not giving them a shot at it would do the same thing, and it would be a hell of a lot more likely we’d be the ones putting the bullets in them.”

“There has to be a better solution. It’s disgusting that the options for metahumans and delinquents is to turn them towards our enemies or hope they die before they turn rotten. That’s not what any of us fight for.”

Natasha made a thoughtful moue. “The world is changing. I’m not saying it’s become more brutal because like it or not it’s always been this way. The stakes are different, though. We’ve entered a world of magic, and gods, and super men and women and it’s nothing anybody is ready for. We’re writing the rulebook as we go, and we’re going to mess some things up.”

“The things we mess up are going to cost _lives_. What if those were your children?”

A steely look settled on Natasha’s face. “I would be grateful that they had someone as hard and as soft as Clint.” Steve tried to puzzle that out. Natasha looked down at her hands, delicate flightless birds settled in her lap. “More selfishly, this will give Clint something to live for that has a much lower likelihood of ending in his death.”

She said it with such detached, analytical finality that something around Steve’s heart broke. “We can’t sacrifice children to him.”

“No. But we could entrust them to him. We could trust that he’s a man who will _always_ try to do by right by them. We could realize that that’s maybe all the certainty these kids are going to be offered in their lives.”

Steve took Natasha’s small hands in his own large ones, interlacing the fingers. That didn’t seem like nearly enough contact so he gathered her under his arm and she leaned into him. Steve opened his mouth to say something like, “okay,” or, “I trust your judgement,” but was cut off by Natasha’s mouth on his own. Her lips were soft and full, familiar but still exciting. She pressed their lips together softly for a long breath in and out before stroking her tongue gently along his lips.

He groaned and she took the opportunity while he was off guard to nudge him over sideways and tuck herself all over the top of him like a throw blanket. They made out like the teenagers neither of them had had the opportunity to be, hands getting into each other’s underpants and tongues sliding together alluringly. Steve popped Natasha’s bra off with a pleased sound and cupped her breasts, the cold and physical stimulation peaking her nipples. She gave a full body shudder and a purring growl. Steve rubbed his hardening cock against her leg through the fabric of his briefs and whimpered when she began crawling down his body, licking his pectorals. Her hair dragged down his neck like the whisper of a silk scarf.

The door clicked, unlocking and opening. “Jesus fuck,” James cried. Natasha and Steve stilled, caught in a tableau of debauchery. “I’ll just— I can—”

James was honestly blushing, uneven, flushed patches all the way down his neck and back, which was all of James he could see. “Since when did you get all shy?” Steve asked, only realizing how derisive it sounded after he said it.

Natasha rolled her eyes at him and sat up, rubbing her panties across his tight briefs in the process. She said something in Russian that sounded an awful lot like an order. James turned around like he’d been jerked on marionette strings, and she met his eyes squarely. “Don’t you dare leave.”

“I knew you guys were— But I didn’t—” James’ eyes said, _I’m sorry_ more eloquently than speech could have. There they were, James’ oldest friend and the woman he had tried to escape the shackles of slavery with, making time on the couch like a pair of cads. All of a sudden, Steve felt a flush of shame and guilt rush down his body.

Natasha must have felt the minute tensing of his muscles as though to fight or flee, because she pinned him with a look. “We are not doing this.” Her mouth set in a determined frown. “Stay,” she ordered him. “Come here,” she ordered James, extending an arm like a queen knowing she would be obeyed.

James approached, still blotchy with embarrassment until the sharp angle of his jaw fit into her palm. “Дорогая моя,” she said quietly, drawing him down for a gentle kiss. James swayed and dropped to his knees, hands bracing on the edge of the couch. “You’re a part of us. Don’t be so quick to leave.”

Steve watched with a tense anxiety. He could see a flood of confusion and indecision wash across James’ face. In that moment Steve felt suddenly certain of what to do. He braced and hitched himself and Natasha so he lay sideways and Natasha through some feat of antigravity perched on him and the back and arm of the couch. “Come on, Bucky.” Steve nodded to the part of the couch in which James would just barely fit if he put his head on Steve’s arm and pressed his body against both Steve and Natasha’s.

“Really?” James asked.

“Yes, really,” Natasha admonished.

At the same time that Steve said, “Get up here.”

“Yeah, okay.” James tucked himself against Steve, interlocking their knees and ankles. His metal arm was cold, but not as much so as Steve had expected. Natasha spread her legs just a bit wider so she could wrap her thighs around those of both men. She brushed James’ hair out of his face tenderly and kissed him on the temple, moving to do the same to Steve. It was a blessing and an invitation. It was acceptance and admission. Steve hugged James close and breathed in the soap and skin smell that he knew as Bucky, and the metal and oil smell he knew now as James.

James blinked slowly, his eyelashes dipping to kiss his cheek and rise once more facing down Steve with a feeling of finality. Steve moved first, lips brushing and heads tilting slightly so their mouths slotted together. His fingers tightened around James’ bicep and around his hip on the couch, pulling him closer. Natasha rumbled approvingly, splayed equally over each man. James stilled, eye rolling upwards to look at Natasha. “Oh, don’t let me interrupt you, boys,” she said, smoothing a hand down both their backs until she reached ass cheeks. James closed his eyes again and twisted his and Steve’s legs together even harder.

“Jesus fuck Rogers, you don’t know how many times I fantasized about doing this with you’.” Their kiss was a battle. James tongue-fucked Steve, rutting where their underwear touched. A small hand reached between them and pulled his cock out of his briefs along with Steve’s and wrapped itself around both of them, stroking firmly. James and Steve stilled and groaned in tandem, twisting so they could see Natasha. Her thumb ran over the head of first Steve, then Bucky’s cock, her other hand holding their shafts so they touched. Natasha smiled down at them, satisfied and proprietary. In a lithe movement she ducked down, forcing them apart slightly so her tongue could trace the path that her thumb had recently traversed.

Crushed between his oldest, closest friend and his team-mate and lover, Steve felt overwhelmingly protected. Their bodies lay between him and the world - solid bulwarks against the rigors and demands of his life. He smiled guilelessly up into her grey eyes and marveled when she leaned into James for a kiss.

James, always the ladies man, had wormed his flesh and blood hand into her panties and stroked her gently. The squirming of his couch-fellows was arousal enough, but Natasha continued to steadily jack their dicks together. James turned for another kiss, and Steve wondered if his cock could get any stiffer. His hand unclenched from James’ arm and moved to run the length of of Natasha’s spine, curving over the meaty swell of her ass and running down her thigh. James ran his fingers around the outside of her pussy, using her own juices to slick up her clit. Her legs were braced wide giving Steve ample opportunity to trace her vulva, wetting his fingers with her velvety slick moisture. One of his fingers slid easily into her. The contrasts of ridged and smooth flesh occupied his sensory awareness for several long moments as Steve savored the sensation of being inside of her.

“Tease,” she admonished them both, grinding into James’ hand.

“I’ll show you who’s a tease,” James replied, all cocky challenge. He wriggled out of his underwear, for a moment seeming to forget to be anxious or nervous or unsure of himself. James twisted and rose, cupping one breast gently with his metal hand and teasing at the other’s nipple. The movement left Steve staring at the long line of his friend’s flank, scarred from fights he remembered and battles he hadn’t gotten the opportunity to be there for. The seam joining metal to flesh didn’t stand out so garishly since James had put weight back on, but it was still a bit jarring. Steve reached up and traced the juncture where silver and pale pink met.

Natasha ground down on his fingers, impatient, distracting him from James’ old injury. James shivered. “Are you sure you want me—”

“Yes,” Natasha said.

At the same time Steve leveraged them both off of the couch with his hips. Natasha rolled over the back of the couch with her usual grace and James toppled, sprawling on the rug. Very seriously Steve said, “You know what we want. What do you want?”

James propped himself up on his elbows, smiling with his crooked charm, “I’d like to get off before my balls bust.”

“Drama queen,” Natasha scoffed, rolling over the couch and leaning down to kiss him. Steve dipped lower, fondling his testicles and running his tongue over the head of James’ cock. James gasped and made an aborted thrusting motion. That was all the encouragement Steve needed to continue in earnest. When Steve and Natasha combined their efforts they made short work of James, who for his own part brought Natasha to the brink with his fingers.

Steve’s own unattended erection bobbed insistently. Natasha mopped Bucky clean with a convenient tissue and looked hungrily at Steve. He obliged her, crawling up her body until his cock was positioned at her entrance, well lubricated by his and James’ ministrations. The look in her eye dared him to give her rug burn on her ass and knock over the furniture. He thrust into her in a series of lengthening strokes, pushing her against the foot of the couch at the last. “Oh fuck,” James breathed out, staring adoringly at them. Natasha grinned in satisfaction. Steve flushed, thrusting into her hard enough to knock the couch into the table behind it, casting crazy shadows across the apartment as it jostled their lamp.

Natasha gestured James towards her and muffled her orgasm on his lips, spasming around Steve’s cock and shuddering in release. Sweat dampened Natasha’s breasts, throwing the valley of her throat and the rise of collarbone and pectoral muscles into a softly lit symphony of soft skin and camera glow. Her hair was a wild curly tangle shot through with the silver of James’ fingers, darkened at the temples with sweat. Everything Steve wanted was within his grasp. His orgasm rose from deep within him, engulfing his senses and cementing the feeling of wholeness and belonging in a quiet, safe place within himself.

**Author's Note:**

> A quick note: to whoever lives at 1324 Olesne, I’m sure you’re actually a lovely person or family. I used the various areas in the Czech Republic because they were places I was somewhat familiar with. I had such a lovely time writing this and can’t thank everyone enough for reading all the way to the end.


End file.
